Three empty buses exploded simultaneously in parking lots in Bat Yam on Thursday evening. Miraculously, no injuries were reported as the buses arrived moments before the incident.

According to reports, a passenger on one of the buses noted a suspicious package in the back seat and brought it to the driver’s attention. The driver drove to a nearby terminal, and the passengers got off the bus as the driver called the bomb squad. The bomb exploded a few moments later. 

Two other devices, each with  5 kilograms of explosives, were found on buses in Bat Yam and Holon and were taken to be defused by bomb squads. 

According to several Hebrew media reports citing an unnamed security source, all of the devices were set to explode simultaneously on Friday morning.

All bus, train, and light rail transport was paused in Israel by order of the Transport Minister, Miri Regev

At least one of the undetonated devices reportedly carried a message saying, “Revenge from Tulkarem.”

The IDF has been carrying out anti-terrorism missions in Tulkarem, Samaria, for the past month. Following the bus blasts, the Israeli military said it would deploy three additional battalions to the West Bank on Friday morning.

The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) arrested a Jewish Israeli who reportedly drove the terrorist that planted bombs on buses in the Bat Yam area of central Israel on Thursday evening, Israeli media reported on Friday.

The initial assessment from the security establishment is that the plan for the attack came from Iran and was carried out by Hamas terrorists from Samaria. Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) identified Iranian involvement in the West Bank by supplying weapons, training terrorists to carry out attacks, and assembling explosive devices, according to a report by Maariv.

Iran Samaria West Bank, Maariv added.

Following the bombings, Hamas’s Tulkarm Battalion released a statement that read: “The revenge of the martyrs will not be forgotten so long as the occupier is present on our land… This is a jihad of either victory or martyrdom.”

Some of the reporting on the incident was absurdly misleading. AP reported on the bus explosions under the headline, “No injuries from Israeli bus explosions in suspected militant attack, police say.” The article compared the incidents to bus bombings in what it referred to as  “the Palestinian uprising of the 2000s.” While emphasizing the “IDF offensive in the occupied territories”, the article never used the word ‘terrorism.”