TERRORISTS USING PALESTINIAN PRESS CARDS

Terrorists using Palestinian press cards
Using a press card issued by his university, a journalism student was able to lead a suicide bomber to the Carmel market in Tel Aviv last Monday, where he blew up killing three Israelis and wounding dozens. The bomber was led through checkpoints between Nablus and Jerusalem without being stopped by Bassam Hundakji, who studies journalism at the A-Najah University in Nablus.

A day before the bombing, Hundakji traveled the same route in order to ascertain that he would not be stopped by security forces when smuggling the suicide bomber into Jerusalem the following day.

The Nablus cell originally planned to target the French Embassy in Tel Aviv, details released by the Shin Bet on Tuesday revealed.

The Shin Bet said that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Nablus planned the attack, recruited the suicide bomber - Amer al-Far,16 - and took him to Tel Aviv with the assistance of two east Jerusalem residents, Bashar Mahmud Daoud Abassi, a taxi driver, and his brother, Jamal Ahmed Abassi.

Hours after the bomb attack in the market, security forces arrested Ahmed Taisir Aradeh, 21, of the Askar refugee camp near Nablus who planned the attack along with Hundakji. Security officials said that additional members of the infrastructure who planned the bombing remain at large.

Aradeh revealed that the bomb used in the market attack was to have been used a month earlier in a double suicide bomb attack that was thwarted by security forces when they killed the mastermind behind the attack and senior PFLP leader Hani Aked on September 15.