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Boat Blast near Gaza Appears Suicide Bomb Attack
Israeli Navy announced November 7 that preliminary investigation showed that a failed bombing attempt on an Israeli Navy vessel off the Gaza coast overnight was apparently a suicide bomb attack.
Late Monday night, the booby-trapped boat approached the navy's Dabur vessel, which was patrolling at the time off the coast of the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip.
However, the fishing boat blew up far away from the Dabur speedboat, causing no injuries or damage.
The probe, which was launched immediately after the incident, is inclined to believe that the boat came from Egypt, but the man steering the boat was a Palestinian suicide bomber.
Navy experts said that it was still not clear how many explosives were loaded on the boat, but the boat approached the Dabur ship in a way reminiscent of the suicide bombing of a US destroyer off Yemen's coast one month ago, which killed 17 US sailors.
If confirmed, it will be the first bomb attack against Israeli Navy since the bloody violence broke out between Israeli soldiers and Palestinians demonstrators in the West Bank and Gaza Strip on September 28. Over 170 people had been killed in the clashes, and thousands wounded, most of them Palestinians.
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