A Palestinian suicide bomber set out to murder Jews in Tel Aviv on Sunday night but in what has been described as “ a miracle”, the only casualty was the terrorist.
The would-be Palestinian terrorist from the area of Nablus (Shechem) in central Samaria is believed to have been transported to Tel Aviv by an accomplice.
The blast occurred on Lehi Road around 8 p.m. A 43-year-old passerby on an electric scooter was moderately wounded.
Paramedics pronounced the bomber dead at the scene and the wounded man was taken to the hospital.
Dr. Eyal Hashavia, head of trauma surgery at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center (Ichilov Hospital), said on Monday that the injured man suffered from a shrapnel wound, described as a penetrating chest injury, and will be operated on soon to remove the fragment.
Hamas claimed responsibility for the bombing on Monday, saying it was carried out in cooperation with Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
According to estimates the bomb weighed less than 22 pounds. The security establishment is very concerned about copycat attacks.
“It can be said that this was a terror attack, with the detonation of a powerful explosive device,” the police and Shin Bet said in a joint statement following a situation assessment led by the commander of the Tel Aviv Police District.
A local police commander said earlier Monday that it is “99%” certain that the explosion was a failed terrorist attack, calling it a “miracle” that it had not resulted in mass casualties.
Ayalon District Police Commander Haim Bublil told Kan News Radio that “it is possible that the assailant planned to reach the nearby synagogue or perhaps the shopping center. We have no ability to understand why [the bomb] exploded at this point in time.”
“The scene here speaks for itself, it is a powerful charge that could have caused significant damage. We are in a kind of miracle that the incident did not end in dozens of deaths,” said Bublil.
Police spokesman Eli Levy also confirmed to Kan News that there is a high probability the incident was an attempted terrorist attack.
“A great miracle happened here. It’s a very serious incident that was investigated by the police and the ISA [Shin Bet],” he said.
“A big miracle happened here”, Yehuda Meshulam, a local resident told TPS.”We prayed the evening prayer here at 8:00 pm. “In the middle of the prayer was a horrific explosion and all the windows were shattered. We all panicked and immediately went outside.We only saw smoke, a truck burning, and the smell of smoke. People didn’t understand what was happening.”
“There was a big miracle here 10 meters from the synagogue,” Meshulam told TPS-IL. The terrorist walked tens of meters, you see him on the cameras passing by shops and nothing happens. Ten meters from the synagogue, he blows himself up. Hashgacha pratit [divine intervention]. Miracle is the word everyone says.”
Meshulam told TPS he believes a disaster was averted in the merit of several yeshiva students who came to the synagogue to study during summer break. He explained that the Chief Rabbi of Bnei Brak visited the students and told them, “The fact that there are people here who study even during their vacation is the preservation of all of Tel Aviv.”
Meshulam thought the rabbi said that to simply encourage the students. But, “Four days after that, everyone understood what this sentence meant when there are guys here every day who study at the expense of vacation – a terrorist can walk down the street and 10 meters in front of the synagogue to blow himself up only. It is a miracle, there is no other word to describe it.”
