Man killed in Tel Aviv when bomb in his backpack goes off; police probing possible terror
Passerby on electric scooter moderately wounded in incident in city’s south; police official says dead man was ‘not an innocent civilian,’ but motive still unclear
Police were probing a bomb blast that killed a man in Tel Aviv Sunday evening as a possible attempted terror attack, with the Shin Bet security agency also looking into the incident.
The man was carrying the bomb in a bag on his back while walking down Lehi Road in the city’s south, when it went off.
The man, in his fifties, was killed as a result of the explosion. A passerby on an electric scooter in his thirties was moderately wounded. Paramedics declared the man who’d been carrying the bomb dead at the scene, and evacuated the injured man to hospital.
Speaking to reporters on location, Tel Aviv Police District Commander Peretz Amar said that the identity of the dead man held the key to the motive.
“It is difficult to identify the body,” said Amar. “We know that he is not an innocent civilian, but somebody who was carrying an explosive device.”
He added: “It could be terror and it could be criminal. The possibility of terror is real.”
הולך עם תיק גב, דקות לפני הפיצוץ | תיעוד: האדם שנהרג בפיצוץ בת"א@galdjerassi https://t.co/GFrg7OsRmd pic.twitter.com/N4Lj3G0WIM
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It was as yet unclear what had caused the bomb to go off, and whether the detonation was an accident.
