Israeli forces cordon off the site of an explosion in Tel Aviv, on August 18, 2024.   (Photo by AFP)

Gaza City, August 19 (RHC)-- The Gaza-based Palestinian resistance groups of Hamas and Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for a deadly bomb blast in Tel Aviv.

In a statement on Monday, the al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing,  said that it had carried out the operation, in cooperation with the Saraya al-Quds Brigades, the Islamic Jihad’s armed wing, on Sunday evening.  It also warned of "more retaliatory attacks" in the occupied territories, as long as Israel continues its policy of massacre, assassination and displacement of Palestinians.

Earlier, Israeli police said they were “99%” sure that the deadly bomb blast in Tel Aviv was an attempted attack.  Ayalon District Police Commander Haim Bublil made the claim on Monday regarding the explosion that killed a man, in his 50s, and moderately injured a passerby on an electric scooter.

The man was carrying a bomb in a backpack while walking down Lehi Road in southern Tel Aviv when it went off.  

Bublil told Israel’s Kan Radio that the assailant may have “planned to go to a synagogue nearby or maybe a shopping center.  We can’t understand yet why it exploded at that point.”

Meanwhile, Tel Aviv District Commander, Superintendent Peretz Amar, said at the scene that the identity of the man is critical to understanding the nature of the incident.

The Shin Bet spy agency is looking into the bomb blast that caused significant damage to a nearby truck.