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Saturday Nov 16, 2024
Thursday, 16 February 2012 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
BANGKOK (Reuters): Thai investigators believe they have found a link between this week’s bomb blasts in Bangkok and New Delhi, a senior security official said on Wednesday, two of three attacks Israel has blamed on Iran.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accusing Iran of targeting diplomats, said if the world did not stop Iran’s “aggression” the attacks would spread.
Iran, whose leaders had threatened to retaliate for Israel’s alleged car-bomb assassination of several of its nuclear scientists, denied involvement in the attacks on Monday and Tuesday, including a bomb that failed to explode in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. Iran blamed them on Israel.
Asked whether the explosives used in India and Thailand were the same, a senior Thai security official said they both had the same “magnetic sheets”.
“The individual was in possession of the same magnets and we are currently examining the source of the magnet,” National Security Council Secretary Wichian Podphosri said.
A man carrying an Iranian passport lost a leg when a bomb he was carrying in Bangkok went off on Tuesday after an earlier explosion, apparently accidental, at a house he was renting. His other leg had to be amputated.
The suspect, identified as Saeid Moradi, was in stable condition in a Bangkok hospital, although he remained unconscious after 10 hours of surgery, said hospital surgeon Suparung Preechayuth.
Police said he had been charged with illegal possesion of explosives, causing explosions, attempted murder and assaulting a police officer.
The American, British and Australian embassies in Bangkok told their citizens to be vigilant in light of the explosions but did not advise against travel to the capital.
A day earlier in the Indian capital, a bomb wrecked a car taking an Israeli embassy official to pick up her children from school, police said. The woman was in stable condition on Wednesday after surgery to her spine and liver.
Her driver and two passers-by suffered lesser injuries in the attack.
On the same day, an attempt to bomb an Israeli embassy car in Tbilisi failed and the device was defused, Israeli and Georgian officials said.
Israel’s ambassador to Thailand said the bombings in Bangkok, New Delhi and Tiblisi bore similarities.
Iran dismissed the allegations, saying Israel often made such accusations.
