Bomb blasts in Bangkok and Delhi linked, Thai police say

THAI investigators believe they have found a link between this week’s bomb blasts in Bangkok and New Delhi – two of three attacks Israel has blamed on Iran.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, accusing Iran of targeting diplomats, yesterday 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 assassination of several of its nuclear scientists using magnetic bombs, 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”. National security council secretary Wichian Podphosri said: “The individual was in possession of the same magnets and we are currently examining the source.”

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 ten hours of surgery, said surgeon Suparung Preechayuth.

Police said Moradi had been charged with illegal possesion of explosives, causing explosions, attempted murder and assaulting a police officer. Two other men shared the house. One, named as Mohammad Khazaei, was arrested at Bangkok’s international airport on Tuesday but has not yet been charged.

The other was arrested yesterday afternoon at Kuala Lumpur airport, as he tried to board a plane to Tehran, Malaysian police said. The suspect, in his thirties, had evaded authorities in Bangkok and flown to Malaysia.

In the Bangkok attack, one device went off in the bombers’ home. Another was thrown at a taxi that would not take one of the men who left the house. The third blew off the man’s leg when he tried to throw it at police, and it either went off before he could throw it or it hit something and ricocheted back.

The American, British and Australian embassies in Bangkok all told their citizens to be vigilant in light of the explosions but did not advise against travel to the Thai capital.

A day earlier in New Delhi, 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 yesterday after surgery on her spine and liver. 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.

“If you put together all the details that we have until now, including the disclosure of the explosives, they are very similar, if not the same,” he told Thai TV.

Iran dismissed the allegations, saying Israel often made such accusations. “We are not accepting, we are denying this and I don’t know how they can assume within a short time of one hour that to say who has done this. It has happened in India. If India’s security says something like that then we have to verify,” said Iran’s envoy to India, Seyed Mehdi Nabizadeh.

Iranian state TV quoted a foreign ministry spokesman as saying the “Zionist regime” of Israel was behind the explosions.

India refused to be drawn into the blame game, a spokesman saying it did not have enough evidence to reach a conclusion on what “individual, organisation or country” was involved.