Embassy guards capture would-be suicide bomber

US Embassy security guards overpowered a would-be suicide bomber after a cafe guard chased him away from a restaurant on the Tel Aviv beachfront.

There were no reports of injury and police said they did not know of any other people involved in the attack yesterday.

Shlomit Herzberg, chief spokeswoman for police in Tel Aviv, said a security guard stopped the man as he tried to enter the Hatayelet cafe on the beachfront promenade about 20 yards from the embassy.

“When he found the explosive vest, the man ran away and the guard chased him while calling for help from security personnel of the American Embassy,” she said.

Embassy guards overpowered the man and called police. She said a bomb squad removed the man’s explosive vest and it was being “neutralised”.

The suspect was arrested.

Cafe guard Mikhail Sarkisov, a 30-year-old former soldier and policeman who had emigrated from Turkmenistan 13 months ago, said about 35 people were in the cafe when the man walked up to him.

“He tried to come in and I checked him with a metal detector and he beeped,” Sarkisov said.

“I asked him, ‘What’s that?’ And he said, ‘It’s mine.’

“I said, ’I didn’t ask whose it was, I said what is it?”’ Sarkisov recalled.

“He put his hand in his pocket. I know what a bomb is. I was an officer in the Russian army.”

Sarkisov said he grabbed at the attacker’s hand and the man ran off towards the US Embassy, a prominent three-storey building on a beachfront lined with bars, restaurants and high-rise hotels.

“I yelled, ‘Terrorist!’ and ran after him,” he said.

Sarkisov said that embassy guards – who include both Israelis and Americans - joined the chase and they caught the man just past the embassy, in front of a hamburger restaurant. Sarkisov said he grabbed the man’s arm and shoved him against a car, which had a cracked windscreen after the incident.

“His head hit the windscreen,” Sarkisov explained.

The incident occurred a day after a suicide bomber killed a 71-year-old woman and injured four other people at a bus stop near Tel Aviv.

“We’ve had back-to-back days of terror activity against Israel,” said David Baker, an official in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s office. “The Palestinian terrorists’ steady stream of terror continues to flow into Israel and this averted attack in Tel Aviv is ample proof.”