A deadly explosion on a bus carrying Israeli tourists in Bulgaria is “clearly a terrorist attack,” Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Wednesday. “We have several people killed and dozens of wounded people,” Barak said. He said the attack was probably initiated by a group under the auspices of “either Iran or other radical Muslim groups,” and named Hezbollah and Hamas as likely suspects. “We are in a continued fight against them. We are determined to identify who sent them, who executed and to settle the account,” Barak said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pointed the finger at Iran, saying it has been behind a string of recent attempted attacks on Israelis in Thailand, India and Georgia, among others. “All the signs (are) leading to Iran,” he said, according to a statement from his office. Netanyahu said his country “would respond with force to Iranian terror.” Venelin Petkov, a reporter for bTV in Bulgaria, said more than 30 people were taken to the hospital, three in a critical condition.
Vania Valkova, director of the Bulgarian interior ministry press office, earlier confirmed at least three people were in the blast on a bus outside Burgas Airport, on Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast. She was not able to confirm the nationalities of those killed but said the flight came from Tel Aviv.
Deputy Israeli Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon also said there were three dead in the explosion. He told Israel Radio, “We cannot confirm yet that this is a terrorist incident, but Iran and Hezbollah have been responsible for incidents like this in the past.” The incident comes on the 18th anniversary of the attack on a Jewish community center in the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, in which 85 people were killed. The tourists’ plane landed in Bulgaria at 5 p.m., the Israeli Foreign Ministry said. Valkova said the bus was in the parking zone when the blast occurred. Oran Katz, an Israeli who was on a bus next to the one that blew up, together with his wife and three children, described a bloody scene.
“The moment we got on (the bus), we heard a very loud explosion. It was the third bus next to us. Everyone started running in all directions. There was a big chaos,” he said. “We took our children with us and ran as far as we could away from the explosion. My oldest daughter is handicapped, so I decided to run back in order to pick up her wheelchair. “There was a big blaze of fire, and we were not allowed to come near. Suddenly, I noticed an unconscious woman laying next to me, very close to the burning bus.
I picked her up together with another man, and we managed to drag her out of the fire that was about to catch her body in seconds. “I cannot forget the sight of body parts scattered around the bus. Ambulances and fire trucks have just started to arrive.” Katz, who then ran back to his family so they could get to the safety of their hotel, said he saw at least six people around him who were injured and bloodied.
“I was not able to see anything of what was happening inside the bus that exploded. It was burning heavily,” he added. Israeli travelers were on seven buses outside the terminal; they had arrived on the same flight from Israel, Katz said. Israel’s Channel 10 station reported that there had been a combined attack of gunfire and explosives outside Burgas airport.