Three buses exploded near Tel Aviv on Thursday evening in what Israeli officials are treating as a terrorist attack. Several other unexploded bombs were found on nearby buses.
The bus explosions occurred in the suburbs of Bat Yam and Holon and caused no injuries. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has asked the police and the Shin Bet security service to “increase preventative activities” in cities across Israel.
Tel Aviv District Police Chief Haim Sargarof said the explosives had timers and that the attack “looks like something [that originated] in the West Bank.” The devices were supposed to explode on Friday morning, authorities believe, when the buses were slated to be in use.
“We may be lucky if indeed the terrorists set these timers to the wrong hour,” police spokesman Aryeh Doron said. “But it’s too early to determine.”
The buses had been emptied of their passengers just moments before they exploded. Bat Yam authorities said that “miraculously, the buses arrived at the parking lots a moment before the explosion.”
Although no terrorist group immediately took responsibility for the attack, a statement claiming to be from Hamas that was circulated on a Telegram channel said after the blasts that “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.”
The explosions came hours after Israel was traumatized by the return of three dead hostages, Ariel and Kfir Bibas, and Oded Lifshitz, and the false return of Shiri Bibas. Late on Thursday evening, Israel confirmed that the body claimed by Hamas to be Shiri Bibas was not Shiri and was instead an unidentified body.
Israeli official Benny Gantz said the bus explosions should be treated as a “mega-attack.”
“We must not look at the result — but at the intention. We must not repeat the mistake of the attack that was prevented in Megiddo,” he said on social media. “To the attempt to murder dozens of Israelis on this difficult day — we must respond not only with tactical actions — but by directly intercepting the senders and the senders’ financiers, and using powerful tools against the terrorist nests themselves. We must exact a heavy price that the terrorist organizations will not forget.”
Defense Minister Israel Katz has asked Israel Defense Forces to ramp up security in the West Bank.
“In light of the severe terror attack attempts [in the Tel Aviv area] by Palestinian terror organizations against the civilian population in Israel, I instructed the IDF to increase the intensity of the counterterrorism activity in the Tulkram refugee camp, and all the refugee camps in Judea and Samaria,” Katz said. “We will hunt down the terrorists to the bitter end and destroy the terror infrastructure in the camps used as front line posts of the Iranian evil axis,” Katz added. “Residents who give shelter to terror will pay a heavy price.”