Monday, February 13, 2012
Elder of ZiyonFrom NYT:
JERUSALEM - Unidentified bombers attacked staff at Israeli embassies far apart in India and Georgia on Monday, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said, and images from New Delhi showed what appeared to be a minivan consumed by flames.Yesterday was the fourth anniversary of the assassination of Hezbollah leader Imad Mugniyeh.
"There was one attempted attack, and one successful, as it were," Paul Hirschson, a spokesman for Israel's foreign ministry, was quoted by Reuters as saying. "In both cases, the people concerned worked with the Israeli embassies."
He also confirmed that a bomb had been found in a car belonging to a staffer at the embassy in the Georgian capital Tbilisi, which was defused by local police.
Indian police said at least one person had been injured in New Delhi but there was no immediate word on fatalities.
Shota Utiashvili, a spokesman for the Georgian Interior Ministry, confirmed that a bomb was discovered affixed to the car of an employee of the Israeli embassy in Tbilisi.
"The car of a Georgian national working for the Israeli embassy was mined," he said. "The embassy employee noticed a suspicious object and he called the police, and the police successfully defused it before it went off."
He said the car was not parked close to the embassy at the time. He said this was the first attempted attack on an employee of the Israeli embassy in Tbilisi. Police have not yet identified any suspects, he said.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for either of the apparently coordinated attacks.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said the attackers were known to Israeli officials, though he did not immediately name any group. "We know exactly who is responsible for the attack and who planned it and we're not going to take it lying down," the daily Haaretz quoted him as saying.
In New Delhi, Indian officials said a driver and the wife of an Israeli diplomat were injured in the late afternoon blast close to the Israeli Embassy, The Associated Press reported.
"They are in the hospital and being tended to," an Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Syed Akbaruddin, told The A.P.
