Nationality of latest suicide bombers gives new twist to a commonplace horror

Suicide bombings such as the one that killed three people in a Tel Aviv bar early on Wednesday are so frequent that they do not attract much attention. But that changed yesterday when Israeli television started reporting that the bomber, and a mysterious accomplice, were British.

The bar that Asif Mohammed Hanif, if he is confirmed as the bomber, chose, was packed when he arrived at 1am. Tel Aviv is Israel's party capital. There was a live blues jam session in Mike's Place, which is on the long beachfront, and the musicians were playing for free.

As the bomber approached, he would have seen a bar full of young people, some of them tourists. The music was so loud you had to go outside to talk, some of the customers said. Those inside would have seen little reason to panic at the sight of the man approaching – witnesses described him as fat, though that might have been because of the explosives strapped to his body.

It was not clear yesterday whether Hanif was an Arab or a British Asian. A man of Middle Eastern appearance would not have been out of the ordinary. Many Israelis are Middle Eastern in origin, some are from India and the city is packed with immigrant workers. But some customers said they were suspicious because the bomber was carrying a briefcase, a strange thing to be taking out at night. And the security guard was certainly suspicious because he decided to stop the young man. After he had walked into the bar, the security guard grabbed him and blocked his way, at which point the suicide bomber detonated his explosives.

"Suddenly I heard an explosion," Noam Rosenthal, one of the musicians inside the bar, told Maariv newspaper. "Immediately after the explosion I saw a large flash of fire near the security guard, and I understood that the terrorist hadn't succeeded in entering. The place was full of people who began to flee into the pub, towards the kitchen. We looked for another exit." There was only one way out. "The police arrived within about five minutes and several wounded people – perhaps dead – lay on the road outside," he added.

A witness named as Nissim told Israeli radio: "Just as we sat down, there was the boom, and plaster fell on our heads from the nearby wall between two stores. It is impossible to describe, impossible to describe. I looked left, and saw that the whole front of the pub was blown out, and people came up to me covered in blood, burnt. You think that you're in a movie, you see people running, on fire, burnt, you don't know what to do."

Yanai Weiss, 46, another of the musicians playing in the bar, died. So did Ran Baron, who was 24. Dominique Caroline Hess, 29, who emigrated five years ago from France, died from her injuries on the operating table. And 35 people were injured, one of whom was in critical condition last night. Remarkably, the security guard survived, but he received serious injuries.

Little is known of the second bomber, reported to be Omar Khan Sharif, another Briton. There were reports yesterday that he was seen scuffling with people outside the bar and that his bomb failed to go off. Initial reports spoke of a mysterious car fleeing the scene.

The suicide bombing was widely seen as having been timed as a response to a pledge from Mahmoud Abbas, the new Palestinian Prime Minister, to disarm militants, in a speech made to the Palestinian parliament on Tuesday.

There was a period, this time last year, when the bombings became so frequent that Israelis started to stay at home, but by and large most people have started to go out again. The general attitude is one of people accepting the risk and refusing to allow their lives to be disrupted.

Responsibility for the bombing was claimed by Hamas and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, who said they were acting together. Unusually, they refused to identity the dead bomber, citing "security reasons".