Peres: Israel will hit terror nests around world
LAST UPDATED: 07/19/2012 12:48
In unusually tough remarks, President Shimon Peres responded Thursday to the Burgas terror attack saying that Israel will hit terror nests around world.
The attack targeting Israelis killed at least seven people in the city of Burgas, soon after a charter plane, Air Bulgaria flight 392 arrived from Ben-Gurion Airport. The seven included five Israelis, the driver, and the suicide bomber, the ForeignMinistry said.
"We were witnesses to a deadly terror attack coming out of Iran ... we know there were other attempts, and this time they succeeded," the president stated.
"It [Israel] has the means and the will to silence and paralyze terror organizations," Peres asserted.
Earlier Thursday Defense Minister Ehud Barak stated that Hezbollah was responsible for the terror attack in Burgas under the auspices of Iran.
Echoing his comments from Wednesday evening, Barak told Israel Radio that Israel would do everything in its power to to find the perpetrators, and bring them to justice.
In response to Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev'sstatement that Mossad did not warn Bulgaria of an expected attack, Barak said that Israeli intelligence services transfer all information of this nature that it receives. However, he said he did not think that intelligence services had accurate information such as the information it obtained in order to thwart the terror attacks in Cyprus and Thailand earlier in the year.
Reinforcing Barak's comments, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman told Israel Radio on Thursday that Israel has solid information that Hezbollah, in close cooperation with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) carried out the terror attack in Burgas.
According to Liberman, Israel's information identifies with certainty and beyond all doubt the Iranian fingerprint on the attack, but did not specify further. Iran and Hezbollah have not stopped operating against Israel for a moment, he added.
On Wednesday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Iran was likely behind the attack on Israeli civilians in Bulgaria, and vowed a powerful Israeli response.
"All the signs lead to Iran. Only in the past few months we have seen Iranian attempts to attack Israelis in Thailand, India, Georgia, Kenya, Cyprus and other places," Netanyahu said in a statement.
"This is an Iranian terror campaign that is spreading throughout the world," Netanyahu said. "Israel will react powerfully against Iranian terror,"
"Eighteen years exactly after the blast at the Jewish community center in Argentina, murderous Iranian terrorcontinues to hit innocent people. This is an Iranian terror attack that is spreading throughout the entire world."
Opposition leader Shelly Yechimovich responded to the "murderous terror attack" in Bulgaria on Wednesday, saying "there is no doubt that the instability in the region is spawned by Iran aiming especially for Israelis and Jews throughout the world."
"Israeli security forces have succeeded to prevent several attempted attacks targeted at traveling Israelis in recent months," Yechimovich added. "Unfortunately, today in Bulgaria we were forced again to cope with terror operations."
Reuters contributed to this report.
