Hostages drama at Israel embassy

Turkey's news agency said embassy security guards captured the attacker, quoting anonymous officials from the embassy. Israeli officials could not confirm the report.

The attacker was identified as West Bank Palestinian Nadim Injaz. Channel 2 TV played a recording of a phone call it said came from him. "I have two hostages," he said in Hebrew. "I will blow up the embassy."

Lawyer Shafik Abuani, who said he had spoken to Injaz by phone, told Israel Radio, however, that the hostages – the consul and his wife – had escaped.

In Injaz's call to Channel 2, he went on, "If they don't let me leave this country now I will burn down the whole building. I will burn everything. I will burn the cars, the doors I will break down the doors. I will break everything."

He said he was demanding asylum and protection from "these murderers the Zionists." At the same time, he said that Palestinian leaders "should die".

Injaz was said to have sought asylum at the British embassy in Tel Aviv in 2006.

Yesterday Israeli police said Injaz was from the West Bank city of Ramallah and was recently released from prison after serving time for his previous embassy attack.

They said at that time that Injaz was an informer and a criminal with a record of property and drug offences. He had financial and legal troubles.

Israel's relations with Turkey have been strained in the wake of the Israeli attack on a Turkish flotilla heading for Gaza on May 31, when nine pro-Palestinian activists were killed. Many Palestinians support Turkey.

Another incident making the news in Israel was the furore over a former Israeli soldier who posted photos on the internet site Facebook of herself in uniform smiling beside bound and blindfolded Palestinian prisoners.

Both the Israeli army and Palestinian officials condemned Eden Aberjil, who admitted her decision to post the photos, taken in 2008 near the Gaza Strip was "thoughtless" but added: "I still don't understand what wasn't okay."

"There was no statement in the photos about violence, about disrespect, about anything that would hurt that person. I just had my picture taken with someone in the background."

She took the pictures off the site, she said "when I understood that so many people were hurt by those pictures."

She said she was shocked by the international interest in the story.