I was lying in bed when all of a sudden I heard an explosion, and felt the windows and walls of the house shake from what felt like a serious blast. Somehow, I knew that noone was injured or hurt.
A few hours later, when returning to the office, I heard that a truck exploded on the Palestinian side of the Erez crossing near the Israel-Gaza Strip border, and the only casualty in the attempted attack was the driver.
A spokesman for Islamic Jihad said Abu Ahmed, a spokesman for Islamic Jihad’s armed wing, said his group carried out the attempted attack in cooperation with the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, an offshoot of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s faction. Ahmed described it as a successful martyrdom operation. He identified the suicide bomber as 23-year-old Ibrahim Nasser from Jabalya, from the northern Gaza Strip, and said the truck was carrying four tons of explosives.
“Thursday’s bombing is meant to send a message to Israel that if it did not accept a truce, Gaza is not going to be a place where you will enjoy stability,” he said.
The truck was followed by a jeep that an IAF helicopter fired a missile at, which the army said was accompanying the exploding truck. The army said that terrorists apparently planned to use the jeep to kidnap soldiers or to penetrate across the border after the explosion. Mortar fire was directed simultaneously at the Suffa crossing to the south.
