A suicide bomber and his accomplice who murdered three people and wounded scores at a Tel Aviv bar yesterday carried British passports and travelled to Israel specifically to kill, according to local officials.
Israeli sources said it was believed that the 21-year-old bomber, Asif Mohammed Hanif, travelled from Egypt to Gaza and then entered Israel.
A second man who was allegedly carrying an explosive belt that failed to detonate was named as Omar Khan Sharif. Last night he was on the run. His British passport records him as born in Derby 27 years ago and entering Israeli through Tel Aviv’s international airport about a month ago. He then visited Gaza, apparently leaving the area a few hours before the attack.
Officials were reluctant to reveal more details but said they believed the British passports carried by the two were genuine. They also noted that the names were more likely to be of Pakistani origin than Palestinian, raising the possibility that Mr Hanif was the first wholly foreign suicide bomber in Israel.
The Foreign Office minister, Mike O’Brien, told the BBC that the government was trying to help the Israelis establish exactly who the bombers were. ”We will cooperate fully with the Israeli authorities in providing any information we can …they certainly were carrying, it appears, British passports, therefore we need to help them get the one that’s escaped and identify the other one.”
British intelligence agency MI5 last night was conducting an urgent investigation into whether the two suicide bombers had stolen the identities of other Britons.
”Passports can be stolen and can be forged. They need to be checked,” a security source said. There was surprise in Whitehall security circles that the Israeli authorities had released the names on the two passports so soon.
The police are still searching for Sharif, who escaped after scuffling with a security guard at the bar and onlookers. He is said to have dumped the bomb and fled. The security guard was wounded in the blast.
”We are certain these people are British and they came here just to carry out this attack,” said an Israeli official. ”It is a worrying change of tactics because it throws all foreigners under suspicion, even from a friendly country like Britain.”
Hanif is not the first Briton to have been involved in Islamist terrorist violence. In January 2002, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh masterminded the kidnap and mur der of US journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan. Saeed, originally from Wanstead, east London, attended a British public school before dropping out of the London School of Economics. He was sentenced to death in Pakistan last year.
London-born Richard Reid, an al-Qaeda sympathiser, tried to carry out a suicide attack on a Paris to Miami airliner in December 2001. He was overpowered by passengers as he tried to ignite explosives in his shoe and was jailed for life in the US in January 2003. Seven Britons captured during military action against the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 are also being held without charge in Camp X-Ray in Cuba.
Israeli sources were unable to say if the bombers carried the explosives in from Gaza for the attack on Mike’s Place, a waterfront bar popular with English-speaking Israelis and foreigners. If so, it would mark the first suicide attack from the Gaza strip since the beginning of the present intifada. However, the militant Islamist groups Hamas and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade both claimed responsibility for the bombing and said the men originated from the West Bank town of Tulkarm.
Sherard Cowper Coles, the British ambassador to Israel, said that he could not comment on security matters but added that his embassy was in close touch with the Israeli authorities.
Three people were killed in yesterday’s attack at about 1am, and 60 wounded, including a barmaid whose arm was blown off. The dead included a 29-year-old French citizen who emigrated to Israel five years ago, Dominique Hess. The other victims were Yanai Weiss (46) a musician from the nearby city of Holon who was playing at the bar, and Ran Baron (24) from Tel Aviv.
Suicide bombings reached a peak in the first quarter of last year, after the assassination of Raed Karmi, leader of the Tulkarm al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. In response to a suicide attack on a hotel in Netanya last Passover in which 26 people were killed, Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield, an invasion of Palestinian cities resulting in hundreds of deaths.
Since then Israel has maintained a strong presence in the West Bank cities, which has resulted in a big fall in suicide bombings and other attacks on Israeli targets.
Until last week’s rail station bombing in Tel Aviv there had only been three other suicide bombings this year: in Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Netanya. – Guardian Unlimited Â