Home Top Stories Hamas and Islamic Jihad Claim Responsibility for Tel Aviv Bombing

Hamas and Islamic Jihad Claim Responsibility for Tel Aviv Bombing

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Hamas and Islamic Jihad Claim Responsibility for Tel Aviv Bombing

Hamas’s military wing and Islamic Jihad took responsibility on Monday for what they said was a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv late Sunday, and threatened further attacks because of the “continued civilian displacement and killings” of Palestinians.

The Israeli police and the Shin Bet security agency said in a statement that a “powerful explosive” had been detonated on Lechi Road in southern Tel Aviv, but made no mention of a suicide attack.

One passerby was moderately injured, the statement said, which described the bombing as a terrorist attack and said that the authorities were investigating. The statement did not say that the assailant had died.

If confirmed, it would be the first suicide bombing in Israel since around 2016.

The Israeli news media broadcast security camera footage of a man with a backpack in the area shortly before the blast. The man was killed in the explosion, news outlets said.

Peretz Amar, the police chief of the Tel Aviv District, said at a news conference that the attacker, who had no criminal record and had not been on the radar of the Israeli security authorities, entered Israel from the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Mr. Amar did not name the attacker but said the explosives had most likely been manufactured in the West Bank and were of low quality.

The attacker had most likely seen dozens of people gathered at a synagogue and stopped to prime the explosives, but had inadvertently detonated them, he said, adding that it could have been a large-scale attack had events turned out differently.

Hundreds of people were killed in suicide bombings in Israel in the late 1990s and early 2000s, as part of the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising. The attacks shook Israeli society and hardened attitudes against Palestinians as potential partners in a peace deal involving two states. The attacks were partly responsible for a decision by Ariel Sharon, then prime minister, to build a separation barrier along and inside the West Bank.

Many Israelis have been on alert for possible attacks since Oct. 7, when Hamas led a deadly incursion into the country that killed around 1,200 people, sparking the war in Gaza. Since then, Hezbollah, a militant group supported by Iran and based in Lebanon, has fired thousands of missiles and drones at northern Israel, while a drone fired last month by the Houthi militia in Yemen hit an apartment building in Tel Aviv, killing one person. In retaliation, Israeli fighter jets bombed a port in Yemen controlled by the Houthis, a group also backed by Iran.

The reference to “the “continued civilian displacement and killings” of Palestinians in the statement on Monday by the Qassam Brigades — Hamas’s military wing — and Islamic Jihad likely refers to events in Gaza, where around 40,000 people have been killed since Oct. 7, according to the Palestinian health authorities, and most of the 2.2 million Palestinians sealed into the territory have been displaced, many of them repeatedly.

But the reference may have also been meant to include events in the West Bank, where Israeli security forces and settlers have killed more than 600 Palestinians since Oct. 7, according to the United Nations, and where the pace of settlements has increased. In the same period, 24 Israelis, including eight members of the security forces, have died in clashes or attacks by Palestinians in the territory.

The settlements are considered illegal under international law, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has said that the Jewish people are not settlers on their own land.

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