Palestinian terrorists are believed to have botched a planned suicide bombing in Israel over Pessah.
The Shin Bet security service announced Tuesday that it had arrested 19 Palestinian suspects in a Hamas plot to smuggle in a 220-pound bomb from the West Bank and detonate it in an Israeli population center on seder night.
According to the Shin Bet, the would-be bomber drove the explosives into Israel in late March, evading scrutiny because he has an Israeli identity card. But for reasons unknown, he later returned to his West Bank hometown, Kalkilya, where the bomb went off by accident.
Had the attack been carried out, it would likely have caused scores or even hundreds of casualties and prompted a major Israeli confrontation with the Hamas leadership in Gaza.
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