Hamas and Islamic Jihad claim responsibility for “suicide attack” in Tel Aviv

The Ezedin al-Qasam Brigades and the al-Qods Brigades, the armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad respectively, said that “suicide attacks in the occupied interior [Israel] will be back in the spotlight as long as the occupier’s (Israeli) massacres, forced transfer operations of civilians and policy of assassination continue.”

Hamas and Islamic Jihad are fighting in the Gaza Strip against the Israeli army, which launched a ground and air offensive in the Palestinian territory in response to a deadly Hamas attack on Israeli soil on October 7.

A “major terrorist attack was prevented yesterday” [domingo] in Tel Aviv,” Israeli government spokesman David Mencer said at a press conference on Monday.

“The Palestinian, who was carrying a backpack full of explosives, blew himself up before he could reach a more densely populated area,” he added.

The attack on Sunday night “lightly injured a passerby,” according to the Israeli police, who reported it as “a terrorist attack with a powerful explosive,” without mentioning that it was a suicide operation.

The explosion occurred shortly before the arrival of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the Israeli capital, where he is due to meet with the country’s leaders to reach a truce agreement in the Gaza Strip after more than ten months of war.

Bomb attacks in Tel Aviv, which were very numerous during the second intifada, the Palestinian uprising of the early 2000s, are now rare.

Israeli authorities said Sunday that the blast killed one person, who was named by Israeli media as the suspected perpetrator.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog on Monday denounced to Blinken “a series of terrorist attacks carried out by Palestinian terrorists,” citing the death of a settler in the West Bank at the hands of a Palestinian on Sunday and the explosion in Tel Aviv.