Israel Police: Explosion in Tel Aviv was an attempted attack

According to police, a fatal explosion in Tel Aviv was an attempted terrorist attack. An explosive device detonated in a man's backpack on Sunday evening in the coastal metropolis as he was walking on a street in the south of the city.

The suspected attacker was killed and an e-scooter driver was injured.

"It can now be confirmed that it was a terrorist attack in which a powerful explosive device detonated," said a joint statement from the police and the Shin Bet domestic intelligence service. The security forces in the greater Tel Aviv area had been put on heightened alert as a result. "We call on citizens to remain vigilant and to report any suspicious person or object to the police."

The military wings of the Palestinian terrorist organizations Hamas and Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the attempted attack. According to the joint statement by the organizations, they will continue to intensify such attacks "as long as the massacres by the occupying power, the expulsion of civilians and the policy of assassinations continue".

The police did not comment on the identity of the suspect. The public broadcaster Kan reported that it was assumed that the suspect was a Palestinian from Nablus in the West Bank. The newspaper "Haaretz" wrote that the police assume that the target of the attack was a nearby synagogue.

At a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Israeli President Izchak Herzog said that a serious terrorist attack had apparently been prevented in Tel Aviv the previous evening. The coastal city on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean has repeatedly been the scene of serious attacks by Palestinians in the past.

A police spokesman told the Israeli army radio station that if the explosion had occurred just a few meters away, "we would have woken up to a huge catastrophe". In the evening, the exact background was initially unclear and the police said they were investigating in all directions.