Security Alarms

BANGKOK – A wounded Iranian fleeing an unintended explosion at a house threw a grenade at Bangkok police that instead blew off one of his legs in a series of blasts Tuesday that Israel’s defense minister called an “attempted terrorist attack” by Iran. The violence came a day after Israel blamed Tehran for targeting its diplomats with bombs in India and Georgia.

Four other people were injured in the Bangkok explosions, which tore the roof off a house where the wounded man lived with two other compatriots. A second Iranian was arrested at Bangkok’s international airport as he was trying to leave Thailand for Malaysia and a third was being sought, police said.

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.

Thai government spokeswoman Thitima Chaisaeng said “we need more analysis” to determine who was behind the attack and whether Iran was involved. She refused to comment on what the Iranians might have been planning or whether targets had been identified.

The explosions in the normally peaceful Thai capital came as tensions are running high between the two Middle Eastern nations because of Israel’s threats of military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities and the recent killings of Iranian atomic scientists. Iran has blamed Israel for the assassinations, and there have been signs that Tehran might try to retaliate.

Iran denied responsibility for the bombing of an Israeli diplomatic car in New Delhi that injured four people and the foiled bombing of an Israeli diplomatic car in Tbilisi, Georgia — both on Monday. Those attacks appeared to mirror the recent killings of Iranian scientists by “sticky bombs.”

“The attempted terrorist attack in Bangkok proves once again that Iran and its proxies continue to perpetrate terror,” Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in Singapore. “The recent terror attacks are yet another example of this.”

Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah are “unrelenting terror elements endangering the stability of the region and endangering the stability of the world,” added Barak, who was in Bangkok on Sunday, according to Israel’s Defense Ministry.

Added Israeli Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch, in an interview with Israel Radio: “We know who carried out the terror attacks, we know who sent them, and Israel will settle the score with them.”

There was no comment from Iranian officials in Tehran on Tuesday’s blasts in Thailand.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland didn’t blame Iran directly, but she noted Monday’s incidents in India and Georgia, and recent “Iranian-sponsored” and “Hezbollah-linked” plots to attack Israeli and Western interests in Azerbaijan and Thailand.

Will Hartley, head of the Terrorism Insurgency Center at IHS Jane’s in London, said the attacks in India, Georgia and Thailand “have all been highly amateurish, and lack the sophistication that would normally be expected from an operation executed by either Hezbollah or Iran’s own external operations wing, the Quds Force.”

The sequence of Tuesday’s blasts in Bangkok began when a stash of explosives apparently detonated by accident in the house occupied by the three Iranians, blowing off part of its roof.

Thai security forces found more explosives in the house, but the possible targets were not immediately known, Police Gen. Pansiri Prapawat said.

Surveillance video from after that blast showed separate images of each of the suspects walking down the middle of a residential street. One man wearing a baseball cap and a dark jacket carried a large backpack over one shoulder and what appeared to be two portable transistor radios — one in each hand.

A second suspect wearing sunglasses, a T-shirt, pants and tennis shoes also carried a backpack. The third, dressed in camouflage shorts, carried nothing.

A man identified as Saeid Moradi was wounded in the initial explosion and left the house, Pansiri said.

“He tried to wave down a taxi, but he was covered in blood, and the driver refused to take him,” Pansiri said. Moradi then threw an explosive that damaged the taxi.

Police who had been called to the scene tried to apprehend Moradi, who hurled a grenade at them, “but somehow it bounced back” and blew off his leg, Pansiri said.

Photos of the wounded Moradi showed him covered in soot, lying on a sidewalk strewn with broken glass in front of a primary and secondary school. Hospital officials said Moradi’s right leg was severed below the knee, while his left leg was severely injured.

The Iranian arrested at the airport was identified as Mohummad Hazaei and had been in the house at the time the explosives went off, police said.

A third Iranian — believed wounded in the first explosion — was at large, they said.

Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra called on people “not to panic” and said the situation was under control.

Three Thai men and one Thai woman wounded in the explosions were taken to Kluaynamthai Hospital, said Dr. Suwinai Busarakamwong.

On Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel had thwarted attacks in recent months in Azerbaijan, Thailand and unspecified other countries.

Last month, a Lebanese-Swedish man with alleged links to pro-Iranian Hezbollah militants was detained by Thai police. He led authorities to a warehouse filled with more than 8,800 pounds (4,000 kilograms) of urea fertilizer and several gallons of liquid ammonium nitrate.

Israel and the United States at the time warned their citizens to be alert in the capital, but Thai authorities said Thailand appeared to have been a staging ground but not the target of any attack.

Pansiri said that “so far, we haven’t found any links between these two cases.”

Authorities are trying to trace Moradi’s movements, but initial reports indicated he arrived in Thailand from Seoul, South Korea, on Feb. 8, Pansiri said. He landed at the southern resort of Phuket, then stayed for several nights in a hotel in Chonburi, a couple hours drive southeast of Bangkok, for several nights.

A bomb disposal unit checked a dark backpack near the spot where Moradi was wounded and police found Iranian currency, U.S. dollars and Thai money in the bag, Pansiri said.

Thailand has rarely been a target for foreign terrorists, although a domestic Muslim insurgency in the country’s south has involved bombings of civilian targets.

In New Delhi, Indian investigators sought the motorcycle assailant who attached the bomb to the Israeli diplomatic car that injured four, including a diplomat’s wife, who was in critical, but stable, condition.

Indian Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said it appeared to be a terror attack carried out by a “very well-trained person.” Authorities were scanning closed-circuit camera video of the street, Chidambaram said.

Israeli media also reported that Mossad teams are in Bangkok and New Delhi to investigate the explosions.

___

Associated Press writers Jocelyn Gecker in Bangkok, Bradley Klapper in Washington and Amy Teibel and Ian Deitch in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

Article source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/terrorism/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120214/ap_on_re_us/israel_attacks

BEIRUT – Al-Qaida’s leader has called for the ouster of Syria’s “pernicious, cancerous regime,” raising fears that Islamic extremists will try to exploit an uprising against President Bashar Assad that began with peaceful calls for democratic change but is morphing into a bloody, armed insurgency.

The regime has long blamed terrorists for the 11-month-old revolt, and al-Qaida’s endorsement creates new difficulties for the U.S., its Western allies and Arab states trying to figure out a way to help force Assad from power. On Sunday, the 22-nation Arab League called for the U.N. Security Council to create a joint peacekeeping force for Syria, but Damascus rejected it immediately.

In an eight-minute video message released late Saturday, al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahri called on Muslims to support Syrian rebels.

“Wounded Syria is still bleeding day after day, and the butcher (Bashar Assad) isn’t deterred and doesn’t stop,” said al-Zawahri, who took over al-Qaida after Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. special forces last May. “However, the resistance of our people in Syria is escalating and growing despite all the pains, sacrifices and blood.”

The United Nations estimates more than 5,400 people have been killed in Syria since the uprising began in March. But that figure is from January, when the U.N. stopped counting because the chaos in the country has made it all but impossible to check the figures.

While many of the anti-government protests sweeping the country remain peaceful, the uprising as a whole has become more violent in recent months as frustrated demonstrators and army defectors take up arms to protect themselves from the steady military assault. An increasing number of army defectors known as the Free Syrian Army have launched attacks, killing soldiers and security forces.

Syria now has become one of the deadliest conflicts of the Arab Spring, and many fear the country of 22 million at the heart of the Arab world is on the verge of a civil war that could engulf the region.

In a grave escalation of the violence, a string of suicide attacks have killed dozens of people since late December. The latest, twin bombings in the major northern city of Aleppo, killed at least 28 people on Friday, the government said. Some 70 people were killed in earlier attacks in the capital, Damascus, on Dec. 23 and Jan. 6. All the blasts struck security targets.

Nobody has taken responsibility for the attacks, but the regime said they have the hallmarks of al-Qaida and immediately blamed the global terror group.

Saturday’s statement by al-Zawahri appears to bolster Assad’s accusations, but the Syrian opposition and the Free Syrian Army reject the government’s claims entirely. They accuse forces loyal to the regime of setting off the blasts to smear the opposition, terrify people into submission and exploit fears of chaos and sectarian warfare.

For many Syrians, the uncertainty over the future is cause for alarm in a country that has watched neighboring Lebanon and Iraq descend into bloody wars over the years. Syria is a fragile jigsaw puzzle of Middle Eastern backgrounds including Sunnis, Shiites, Alawites, Christians, Kurds, Druse, Circassians, Armenians and more.

After Friday’s bombings in Aleppo, Zuheir al-Atasi, a member of the opposition Syrian National Council, accused the government of staging the attacks.

“After the heavy explosions, members of the opposition went to the site to film it. There were ambulances but no corpses. We documented that on tape,” he said in Vienna during a gathering of Syrian opposition groups. “When the Syrian National TV arrived they started to bring out corpses. Once again we witnessed a theater play.”

There is virtually no way to determine who was behind the attacks or to perform an independent investigation in Syria, one of the most authoritarian states in the Middle East. Assad has largely sealed off the country and prevented reporters from moving freely. The Arab League sent a now-suspended observer mission into the country to provide an outside view, but government minders accompanied the team.

Salman Shaikh, director of the Brookings Doha Center, a think tank in the Qatari capital, said prolonged chaos in Syria could open the door to extremist forces like al-Qaida.

“The longer this goes on, we may get a more permissive environment in Syria for these kinds of characters as the Syrian people get more and more desperate,” he said. “I don’t think they would be welcomed in Syria but there may be desperate people in Syria who are looking for any kind of help.”

Still, Shaikh is not convinced that Saturday’s al-Qaida statement was anything more than the terrorist group trying to reassert its influence in the Middle East, now that the Arab Spring uprisings have, in many ways, pushed it to the sidelines.

“Al-Zawahri’s pronouncement, to me, is a propaganda effort that says, ‘We’re alive and well in the Mideast,’” he said.

He acknowledged that the suggestion that al-Qaida could become involved in the uprising could have a “chilling effect” on efforts by the West to stem the bloodshed.

“Certainly the U.S. policymakers are advised by their last experience and their last experience is Iraq. So yes, I presume there would be alarm and hesitation in getting further involved,” he said.

In Saturday’s Internet posting, al-Zawahri asked Muslims in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey to join the uprising against Assad’s regime, saying Syrian rebels must not rely on the West.

“Don’t depend on the West and Turkey, which had deals, mutual understanding and sharing with this regime for decades and only began to abandon it after they saw it faltering,” he said. “Instead, depend on Allah alone and then on your sacrifices, resistance, and steadfastness.”

He urged Syrians to oppose help from the Arab League and “its corrupt agent governments.”

Hours later, a Sunni sheik in Iraq’s northern Kurdish region said a group of clerics in the area is calling for a Muslim jihad, or holy war, against Assad’s regime.

“Jihad is the duty of every Muslim against the Assad regime,” said Sheik Abdul-Rahman Abdul-Karim Barzanji, describing the edict issued by the Union of the Scholars of Islam in Kurdistan. “Any support from any Muslim or country is forbidden.”

Syria has a large population of Kurds, who have mostly stayed on the sidelines of the uprising since Assad’s regime began giving them long-denied citizenship as a gesture to win support.

The Arab League has been at the forefront of regional efforts to end the bloodshed in Syria.

On Sunday, the Arab League called for the U.N. Security Council to create a joint peacekeeping force for Syria. The resolution adopted by the League also demanded that Syrian regime forces lift the siege on neighborhoods and villages and pull troops and their heavy weapons back to their barracks.

The central city of Homs has seen some of the worst violence of the uprising, and activists said regime forces were shelling rebellious neighborhoods on Sunday. Hundreds are believed to have been killed since the latest assault in Homs began more than a week ago.

The Arab League resolution also calls on Syrian opposition groups to unite ahead of a Feb. 24 meeting of the “Friends of Syria” group,” which includes the United States, its European allies and Arab nations working to end the conflict.

Syria’s ambassador to Egypt, Ahmed Youssef, swiftly rejected the resolution, saying it showed the collective Arab will has been “hijacked” by states led by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which are opposed to Assad’s regime.

Syria’s ambassador to the Arab League, Ahmed Youssef, was quoted in Syria’s state media as saying that Qatar and Saudi Arabia were “living in a state of hysteria after their last failure at the U.N. Security Council to call for outside interference in Syria’s affairs and impose sanctions on the Syrian people.”

The regime’s crackdown has left it almost completely isolated internationally, except for key support from Russia and China, which delivered a double veto to block a U.N. resolution calling on Assad to leave power.

Moscow’s stance is motivated in part by its strategic and defense ties, including weapons sales, with Syria. Russia also rejects what it sees as a world order dominated by the U.S. Last month, Russia reportedly signed a $550 million deal to sell combat jets to Syria.

The veto prompted Western and Arab countries to consider forming a coalition to help Syria’s opposition, though so far there is no sign they intend to give direct aid to the Free Syrian Army.

On Sunday, President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Jacob Lew, said it’s only a matter of time before Assad’s government collapses.

Speaking to “Fox News Sunday,” Lew said: “There is no question that this regime will come to an end. The only question is when.”

__

Associated Press writers Lara Jakes and Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad, Hamza Hendawi in Cairo, Philipp Jenne in Vienna and Kimberly Dozier in Washington contributed to this report.

Article source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/terrorism/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120212/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_al_qaida_syria