Hizbollah television station said it received a statement from Islamic Jihad this evening claiming responsibility for a suicide bombing in central Israel in which two people were killed and four wounded.
Beirut-based Al-Manar television said it received a fax from the military arm of Islamic Jihad claiming the attack and identifying the suicide bomber as Nidal Shadouf, aged 20.
Israeli police said that a Palestinian suicide bomber carried out an attack in the central Israeli town of Binyamina near Tel Aviv killing two people and wounding four others.
The explosion came amid heightened security alert as Israel was about to launch the Maccabiah Games, or Jewish Olympics, in Jerusalem.
Last night two Palestinians were killed while trying to plant a bomb in Jerusalem. The bodies of the two men were found in West Jerusalem near the stadium where the Israeli olympic games, the Maccabiades, were to begin later today.
"It is possible that the two terrorists were hoping to set off the bomb during the opening ceremony of the Maccabiades" a police spokesman said. He said the plan was unlikely to have succeeded given the police security cordon around the games.
A thousand police and hundreds of guards were deployed in the stadium and at its entrances, with thousands more police on alert in Jerusalem, the spokesman added.
AFP