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00:00News just coming in to us. Police in Israel are treating the incident as a suspected terror
00:05attack after explosions rocked several buses in Bat Yam, south of Tel Aviv. Security services say
00:12two bombs exploded, three others are being defused and there are no immediate reports
00:18of casualties. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is meanwhile being briefed by his
00:24military secretary. He's then to hold a security situation assessment. For the very latest,
00:30let's cross live now to our correspondent in Israel, Noga Tarnopolsky is standing by for us.
00:37Noga, what is it exactly that we know about what's happened there at this stage? Police
00:41are still at the scene. What's happening? Yes, absolutely. It's a story that is still underway.
00:48We just heard from the Israeli defense minister who said that he has ordered the army to step
00:55up operations in the West Bank. It's worth remembering that Israel started major operations
01:03in the West Bank town of Jenin and then in adjacent towns a month ago tomorrow, exactly
01:10one month ago. And there was a strange statement made by the so-called Tulkarem Brigade of Hamas
01:19just a few moments ago. It didn't take responsibility for these attempted bombings
01:28of five buses, but it did welcome this effort. And so the suspicions right now are that there
01:37might be a connection that possibly a Hamas cell in the West Bank was trying to somehow
01:43mark one month since the start of the IDF operation in the West Bank. And we also found
01:49out that this not only represents obviously a failure of Israeli intelligence, but that the
01:57fact that no one was hurt is just dumb luck. A timer on two of the bombs went off at the wrong
02:07time. Apparently these bombs were put in the buses in the hope of the buses blowing up tomorrow,
02:14Friday morning, the beginning of the weekend in Israel and hundreds of people could have been
02:19killed. Now, it's obviously a very worrying development for people there in Israel. Also
02:25concerning when it comes to the already very fragile ceasefire in place in Gaza. It might be
02:31too early to say at this stage, but what kind of consequences could this development have
02:37for the truce in Gaza? It's hard to say because if Israel does in fact expand its military
02:46operations in the West Bank, we don't know exactly what that could provoke or how that could spread.
02:53And obviously it goes without saying that this organized effort to conduct a massive,
03:00multi-site terror attack in Israel at the start of the weekend is without question an escalation
03:08and is going, I'm almost certain that Israel will consider this a grave breach of Hamas's
03:16part of the ceasefire agreement in Gaza, since it appears to be Hamas linked. We have to wait
03:22a few hours to know that for sure. But this could even cause, for example, breaking off
03:28the talks on phase two of the ceasefire, which have just started again today. I also want to
03:36mention something that's just come through. Israel is heightening security on all trains
03:41and at the Ben Gurion International Airport. Apparently there's a very wide ranging search
03:47underway right now. No, we'll leave it there for now. Thank you so much for that. That's
03:51our correspondent in Israel, Noga Tanepolsky, joining us after several.