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2004 Ashdod Port bombings

Near-simultaneous suicide bombings in Israel

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 23, 2026
Entity authorityQ4602492
Source-derived summary

The 2004 Ashdod Port bombings were two suicide bombings carried out nearly simultaneously on March 14, 2004 at the Port of Ashdod in Ashdod, Israel. As a result, 10 civilians were killed and 16 were injured. Hamas and Fatah claimed joint responsibility for the attack.

The attack

On Sunday, March 14, 2004, two Palestinian suicide bombers who wore explosive belts hidden underneath their clothes approached the Port of Ashdod. Despite the vast security arrangements at the compound, the two suicide bombers managed to infiltrate the compound.

At 16:20 pm the suicide bombers detonated their explosive devices - one exploded himself in an office building inside the compound, and the other exploded after a few moments at the entrance to the compound. The force of the blast killed ten civilians, most of them were port workers, and injured 16 others.

The perpetrators and Israeli response

Hamas and Fatah claimed joint responsibility for the attack and stated that the attack was carried out by two 18-year-olds from the Jabalya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. The two assailants managed to infiltrate Israel from Gaza by hiding in a container that went through the Karni Crossing. A Hamas leader in Gaza stated that the original plan was that the suicide bombers would blow up fuel tanks at the port; Israel said the bombers intended to carry out a "mega attack" with hundreds of casualties, but instead blew themselves up hundreds of meters from the tanks.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “2004 Ashdod Port bombings” is near-simultaneous suicide bombings in Israel. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Ashdod, Port and bombings, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2004—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Ashdod, Port and bombings is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “near-simultaneous suicide bombings in Israel” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4602492. Authority coordinates are 31.830, 34.641. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2004.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

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Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from 2004 Ashdod Port bombings” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.