Bomb Blast Near Synagogue in Tel Aviv Confirmed as Terrorist Attack

The Hamas terrorist organization took credit for a bombing in Tel Aviv on Aug. 18, one that apparently went awry, with the device exploding prematurely and killing only the bomber.
The explosion near a synagogue also injured one passerby.
Police and security forces confirmed on Aug. 19 that it was a terrorist attack.
In a statement, Hamas said that it had carried out the attack, which it termed a “martyrdom operation,” along with Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another Gaza-based terrorist group.
Hamas said the suicide bombings would continue in response to Israeli attacks “as long as the massacres of the occupiers and the policy of targeted killings continue.”
Security video footage showed the bomber, wearing a large backpack, walking down Lehi Road in south Tel Aviv shortly before the device exploded prematurely in a powerful blast.
Police said the bomb weighed less than 10 kilograms (about 22 pounds), contained nails and pieces of metal, and was likely targeted at the nearby Shimon Bar Yochai synagogue, which is filled with more than 100 people during evening prayers.
The synagogue’s rabbi, Avraham Meshulam, 73, said the blast “shook the synagogue.”
A police commander said it was only a few meters away.
“The windows shattered, people screamed, and there was chaos. People thought it was a missile from Iran,” he said.
One police commander called it “a miracle” that it did not explode in the synagogue or a nearby shopping center.
“It could have ended in dozens of deaths,” he said.
Another police commander said emergency dispatchers received dozens of calls “reporting a loud explosion and body parts scattered on Lehi Street.”
Police said they were finding it difficult to identify the body, that of a man about 50 years old.
Zvi Hasid, head of the Jewish ZAKA organization, which assists police at disaster scenes and recovers body parts following religious law, said, “The debris was scattered over an area of hundreds of meters, following the intensity of the explosion.”
A 33-year-old man was taken to a hospital with shrapnel injuries to his limbs and chest.
Suicide bombings were a hallmark of the Palestinians’ Second Intifada uprising against Israel, beginning in late 2000.
That started after the Palestinians rejected a peace deal proposed by President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak at Camp David in Maryland.
During the violence, Palestinian terrorists carried out scores of suicide bombings in Israel, killing hundreds of people in buses, restaurants, and other public places.
Hamas and other groups have mostly abandoned the tactic since then, resorting instead to shootings, stabbings, car-ramming attacks, and firing rockets from Gaza.
The last suicide attack inside Israel took place in 2016, when a 19-year-old Palestinian detonated a bomb on a Jerusalem bus, injuring 21 people.
Security experts said there had been a recent escalation of terrorism in the West Bank and several thwarted suicide attacks.
“It seems that maybe another front is being opened,” Michael Milshtein, a former head of Palestinian affairs for Israeli intelligence, said.
“These are going to be very bad years for Israel.”