Israel to "settle the score" for Bangkok attack
Updated at 4:26 p.m. ET
JERUSALEM - An Israeli Cabinet minister says his country will "settle the score" with the perpetrators of a bombing attempt in Bangkok.
A wounded Iranian fleeing an unintended explosion at a house threw a grenade at Bangkok police that instead blew off one of his legs in a series of blasts Tuesday. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the explosion, which wounded four civilians, was an "attempted terrorist attack" by Iran.
Israel has also blamed Iran for a pair of attacks on Israeli diplomatic targets in India and Georgia on Monday. Tehran has denied responsibility for those attacks.
Speaking on Israel Radio, Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch did not mention Iran explicitly, but strongly implied Israel would seek revenge.
"We know who carried out the terror attacks, we know who sent them, and Israel will settle the score with them," he said.
Police blame bloody Bangkok blasts on Iranian
Israel on heightened alert after attacks abroad
India vows to find person behind Israel attack
The Bangkok explosions tore the roof off a house where the wounded man lived with two other compatriots. A second Iranian was arrested at Bangkok's international airport as he was trying to leave Thailand for Malaysia and a third was being sought, police said.
Israel's Channel 10 TV quoted unidentified Thai authorities as saying the captured Iranians confessed to targeting Israeli interests. The site of the blast is just a few miles from the Israeli Embassy.
Thai government spokeswoman Thitima Chaisaeng said "we need more analysis" to determine who was behind the attack and whether Iran was involved. She refused to comment on what the Iranians might have been planning or whether targets had been identified.
The explosions in the normally peaceful Thai capital came as tensions are running high between the two Middle Eastern nations because of Israel's threats of military strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities and the recent killings of Iranian atomic scientists. Iran has blamed Israel for the assassinations, and there have been signs that Tehran might try to retaliate.
Iran denied responsibility for the bombing of an Israeli diplomatic car in New Delhi that injured four people and the foiled bombing of an Israeli diplomatic car in Tbilisi, Georgia — both on Monday. Those attacks appeared to mirror the recent killings of Iranian scientists by "sticky bombs."
"The attempted terrorist attack in Bangkok proves once again that Iran and its proxies continue to perpetrate terror," Barak said in Singapore. "The recent terror attacks are yet another example of this."
Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah are "unrelenting terror elements endangering the stability of the region and endangering the stability of the world," added Barak, who was in Bangkok on Sunday, according to Israel's Defense Ministry.
There was no comment from Iranian officials in Tehran on Tuesday's blasts in Thailand.
In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland didn't blame Iran directly, but she noted Monday's incidents in India and Georgia, and recent "Iranian-sponsored" and "Hezbollah-linked" plots to attack Israeli and Western interests in Azerbaijan and Thailand.
Will Hartley, head of the Terrorism & Insurgency Center at IHS Jane's in London, said the attacks in India, Georgia and Thailand "have all been highly amateurish, and lack the sophistication that would normally be expected from an operation executed by either Hezbollah or Iran's own external operations wing, the Quds Force."
The sequence of Tuesday's blasts in Bangkok began when a stash of explosives apparently detonated by accident in the house occupied by the three Iranians, blowing off part of its roof.
Thai security forces found more explosives in the house, but the possible targets were not immediately known, Police Gen. Pansiri Prapawat said.
Surveillance video from after that blast showed separate images of each of the suspects walking down the middle of a residential street. One man wearing a baseball cap and a dark jacket carried a large backpack over one shoulder and what appeared to be two portable transistor radios — one in each hand.
A second suspect wearing sunglasses, a T-shirt, pants and tennis shoes also carried a backpack. The third, dressed in camouflage shorts, carried nothing.
A man identified as Saeid Moradi was wounded in the initial explosion and left the house, Pansiri said.
"He tried to wave down a taxi, but he was covered in blood, and the driver refused to take him," Pansiri said. Moradi then threw an explosive that damaged the taxi.
Police who had been called to the scene tried to apprehend Moradi, who hurled a grenade at them, "but somehow it bounced back" and blew off his leg, Pansiri said.
Photos of the wounded Moradi showed him covered in soot, lying on a sidewalk strewn with broken glass in front of a primary and secondary school. Hospital officials said Moradi's right leg was severed below the knee, while his left leg was severely injured.
The Iranian arrested at the airport was identified as Mohummad Hazaei and had been in the house at the time the explosives went off, police said.
A third Iranian — believed wounded in the first explosion — was at large, they said.
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Patriotic Americans must stop the parasite Israel from dragging the USA into World War Three.
We all know their is a nation that wants a third world war, could this be the instigator, it is said they want it to start in the mid east, where they are not located.
It ticks me off that this story gets national attention only because it involves Israel/Iran. The sentence quoted above, buried on the last page, makes the non-Israel story sound trivial, when in fact more than three thousand people have been killed since 2004.