AFP
Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad on Monday claimed responsibility for a bombing in Tel Aviv, calling it a “suicide operation” and threatening more attacks in Israel as the Gaza war drags on.
Israeli police earlier said the late Sunday blast in Israel’s commercial hub was a “terror attack” that prompted heightened alert.
The force had reported that one person — who Israeli media said was the suspected assailant — was killed, and another wounded.
The armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which are both fighting against Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip, said in a joint statement that they “carried out the suicide operation that took place Sunday evening in the city of Tel Aviv”.
But Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said a more serious attack was averted.
“The Palestinian with a backpack loaded with explosives exploded his charge that he was carrying before he managed… to reach a more heavily populated area,” Mencer said in an online press briefing.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad threatened to carry out more such attacks in Israel “as long as the occupation’s massacres, the displacement of civilians and the policy of assassinations continue”.
The police said Sunday’s attack involved “a powerful explosive”.
“As a result of the explosion, a passerby was moderately injured,” the police said, adding that authorities had ordered “an increase in alert levels and extensive searches throughout the greater Tel Aviv area”.
The blast occurred shortly after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Tel Aviv to push for a ceasefire in Gaza after more than 10 months of war triggered by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.
Diplomats say a Gaza truce could help to avert a feared wider war.
