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| Middle East | |
| Tel Aviv British bombers came via Jordan | |
| 2003-05-05 | |
| EFL - More details on the bomber's trail: The two British bombers involved in the bombing of Mike's Bar in Tel Aviv early Wednesday arrived in the territories via the Allenby Bridge, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told the weekly cabinet meeting yesterday. Assif Mohammed Hanif blew himself up in the attack, killing three people, but Omar Khan Sharif, who fled when his explosive belt malfunctioned, remains at large. Police yesterday scaled back the extensive search of the south Tel Aviv area for Sharif on the assumption that he has now made his way back to the territories. Omar Sharif? Isn't he a little old to be doing this crap? In recent months, the two were students in Damascus, where it appears they were recruited by one of the terror groups in the Syrian capital. A few weeks before the bombing, they crossed from Jordan via the Allenby Bridge border crossing. As far as is known, they were not detained or questioned. Among their possessions were explosives which, according to Mofaz, were concealed in a copy of the Koran. Nice touch, that On arriving in Gaza, they made contact with local terror cells, and felt safe enough to cross back into Israel at least one more time. On crossing the Erez checkpoint, they did not raise any suspicions of security personnel. Explosives experts say it is possible to make explosives that can be condensed into a very small space to evade detection at a border crossing. They say it was unlikely detonators were smuggled into Israel from overseas. Homemade, that's why they had a 50% failure rate
ISM activists appear to be catching lead a lot lately.... sympathy meter... tap tap... nope Mofaz said that last week's attack, which came just hours after the swearing in of Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), was aimed at harming the Palestinian prime minister as much as it was aimed against Israel. British intelligence officials fear the Tel Aviv suicide bombing could inspire young Moslems to carry out similar attacks against targets in the UK or abroad. A report in the Sunday Telegraph said MI5 knew the two Britons had links to Islamic extremists but had decided they were not potential terrorists. The Telegraph also said the two may have been trained by Al-Qaida or Hezbollah. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said there were "serious leads" suggesting that Hanif and Sharif had been trained in camps in Syria by supporters of either Al-Qaida or Hezbollah, the paper said, adding that Israel and MI5, Britain's internal security service, are cooperating on the case. | |
| Posted by:Frank G |