JERUSALEM: Israel’s internal security service said yesterday it had arrested five Palestinians for planning attacks, including a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv.
The suspects from the West Bank were arrested in October and November and included a woman who planned to blow herself up in Israel’s commercial capital, the Shin Bet said.
The five Palestinians from the town of Atil, near Tulkarem in the northern West Bank, were also planning to blow up a military bus and kidnap an Israeli soldier, the Shin Bet said in a statement.
It added that there was a “high level of motivation among terrorist militants” after the Gaza war, which in July and August killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and 73 on the Israeli side, most of them soldiers.
The Shin Bet said that Hamas, Gaza’s de facto rulers, and Islamic Jihad planned to claim the suicide attack if it had gone ahead.
AFP
