BANGKOK — Israel accused Iran of waging a covert campaign of state terror that stretched this week from the Middle East to the heart of Asia after a bungled series of explosions led to the capture of two Iranians in Bangkok.
Authorities in Israel ratcheted up security at home and abroad following Tuesday’s explosions in the Thai capital, escalating a confrontation over Iran’s suspect nuclear program and raising fears of war.
The bombs discovered in a Bangkok house after a series of blasts in the Thai capital were similar to those used in attacks on Israeli diplomats in India and Georgia, the Israeli ambassador said today.
While the targets of the bombs were not clear, “we can assume from the other experiences that we were the target,” Ambassador Itzhak Shoham told The Associated Press in Thailand.
On Monday, an Israeli diplomat’s wife and driver were wounded in New Delhi when a bomb stuck to their minivan exploded, and another device was defused on an Israeli Embassy car in Tbilisi, Georgia. Israel blamed Iran for those attacks as well.
Israel has threatened military strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, and Iran has blamed the Jewish state for the recent killings of Iranian atomic scientists.
Iran denied responsibility for the attacks in India and Georgia, which appeared to mirror the killings of the Iranian scientists that used “sticky bombs.”
The series of blasts in Bangkok wounded four Thai civilians and blew off the leg of an Iranian who had fled a house carrying what looked like grenades after a cache of explosives ignited there, apparently by mistake.
When police searched the Iranians’ home, the bomb squad found and defused two explosives, each made of 3 or 4 pounds of C-4 explosives inside a pair of radios, and National Police Chief Gen. Prewpan Damapong said the bombs were “magnetic” and could be stuck on vehicles.
The wounded Iranian was in police custody at a Bangkok hospital, and immigration police detained a second Iranian as he tried to board a flight for Malaysia. Security forces hunted for a third Iranian suspect.
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.
There was no comment from Iranian officials in Tehran on Tuesday’s series of explosions in Thailand.
