Tel Aviv bus bomber rehearsed attack: report

A Palestinian who planted a bomb on a bus in Tel Aviv made "practice runs" prior to the attack that wounded 27 people last month, the Ynet news site reported Thursday. Muhammad Mafarji, 18, a resident of the West Bank village of Beit Lakiya, boarded buses travelling to Tel Aviv at least twice in the two days before the bombing, in order to scope out the best route and ensure that he was not rousing suspicion, the report said, citing new details of an investigation by security forces. "I did this because of Operation Pillar of Defense," Ynet quoted the bomber as telling police investigators, referring to an Israeli offensive against militants in the Gaza Strip that took place at the time he carried out the attack. A Tel Aviv court on Wednesday indicted Mafarji of planting the remote-controlled bomb that ripped through the No. 142 bus near the nation's military headquarters, charging him with multiple counts of attempted murder and aiding the enemy during wartime. The bomber, who worked at a McDonald's branch in the Israeli city of Modiin and carried an Israeli ID that enabled him unrestricted movement in the country, reportedly told investigators that he had boarded two buses before activating the device on a metro bus. He claimed to had initially boarded a bus to Tel Aviv that was packed with commuters, but decided against activating it then and there since it was "full of children and I didn't want them to get hurt," according to Ynet. Once in Tel Aviv, he boarded another bus that was mostly empty before boarding a third packed with passengers. It was then that he activated the device, disembarked and phoned his handler to report that the bomb is in place and ready for detonation. By the time it went off, Mafarji was on a train, heading back to his shift at McDonald's, where police counter-terrorism teams apprehended him several hours later, the report said. His three accomplices in the attack, all affiliated with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, also plotted to assassinate Israeli ministers and were weighing attacks against soldiers and civilians, including suicide bombings and drive-by shootings, the Shin Bet security service said in a statement issued Wednesday after a gag order was rescinded. The agency said that the four men were in the process of collecting intelligence for these attacks at the time of their arrest. Ahmad Moussa, the cell's leader, had "extensively researched" the internet for information on producing bombs, according to the Shin Bet statement. Outraged by Israel's assassination of Hamas military chief Ahmed al-Jaabari and the military campaign against Gaza militants that ensued, he assembled and delivered the bomb detonated on the bus, commandeered the attack and activated the device himself with a cell phone, the statement said. The cell's remaining members, who were arrested within hours of the attack and admitted to their involvement, were named as Fuad Azai, 27, an Islamic Jihad operative previously imprisoned in Israel, and Muhammad Damara, 25, a member of Hamas. The Shin Bet statement said the latter planned to recruit volunteers from a Palestinian university in the West Bank for suicide bombings in Israel.