Suspects arrested for planning Tel Aviv car bombing

ISRAELI authorities have arrested 19 Palestinian militants for planning to set off a huge car bomb in Tel Aviv over the Jewish holiday of Passover.

The suspects are all Hamas members from the West Bank town of Qalqiliya, the Shin Bet security agency said in a statement.

The agency said the arrests took place in late March, but details were only cleared for publication yesterday, the day after the week-long holiday ended.

Hamas officials denied the account.

Shin Bet said a Palestinian man drove a car packed with 100kg of explosives into the Tel Aviv area, then, for reasons not yet clear, returned to Qalqiliya where the car later exploded through a technical malfunction. No one was hurt.

The would-be bomber was able to enter Israel unhindered because he has an Israeli Arab stepmother and holds an Israeli identity card, Shin Bet said.