Bangkok: The Iranians arrested after accidentally setting off an explosives cache in Bangkok were planning to attack Israeli diplomats, Thailand's police chief said yesterday, the first confirmation by local officials that the group was plotting terror attacks in the Southeast Asian country.
Police chief Gen Prewpan Dhamapong said that Thai authorities "know for certain that (the target) was Israeli diplomats."
Specific targets
"This issue was about individuals and the targets were specific," he said. "This was something personal."
Israel is accusing Iran of waging a campaign of state terror against Israeli targets abroad, including an explosion on Monday in New Delhi that tore through an Israeli diplomatic vehicle, wounding the driver and a diplomat's wife, and a foiled attempt the same day to detonate another bomb on the car of the Israeli Embassy in Georgia.
Iran has denied responsibility for all three plots, including one uncovered in Bangkok on Tuesday when explosives stored in a house occupied by several Iranian men blew up accidentally.
The Israeli ambassador to Thailand, Itzhak Shoham, declined to comment on the report and said the Israeli Embassy was open and functioning as normal.
Shoham told The Associated Press earlier this week, however, that the similarity of the bombs found in Bangkok and New Delhi had led Israel to believe the plots were linked.
Link between blasts
Prewpan confirmed that two homemade "sticky" bombs found at the blast site on Tuesday matched the devices planted on Israeli diplomatic cars in India and Georgia a day earlier.
"The type of improvised explosives they used were the same. The type that was attached to vehicles," Prewpan said.
Last month, after police arrested a Lebanese-Swedish man in Thailand with alleged links to Hezbollah, authorities here insisted Thailand was only being used as a staging ground for attacks, but was not the target.
The man led police to a warehouse near Bangkok packed with more than 4,000 kilograms of urea fertilizer and other materials that could be used to make bombs.
At the time, Israel and the United States warned their citizens to be alert. The US Embassy said foreign terrorists may have been looking to attack tourist areas in Bangkok and Thai media reported the attacks were aimed at Israeli targets, including the Israeli Embassy.
Thai officials say it is not clear if the two incidents are connected.
Larger terror group
Police and investigators are still trying to determine if the Iranians found in Bangkok were part of a larger terror group.
Two of the men were detained on Tuesday after fleeing their destroyed house.
They have been identified as Saeed Moradi and Mohammad Kharzei. A third Iranian, Masoud Sedaghatzadeh, was detained on Wednesday in Malaysia, one day after boarding a flight there from the Thai capital.
