(CNN) — A bus bombing which claimed the lives of five Israeli tourists in Bulgaria was likely carried out by a male suicide attacker with a fake Michigan driver’s license, Bulgaria’s interior minister said Thursday.
Israel was quick to point the finger at Iran or an Islamist militant group over the attack, which occurred Wednesday in a parking lot outside Burgas Airport in Bulgaria. Tensions between Israel and Tehran have been escalating in recent months.
In a strongly worded televised statement Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the attack was “perpetrated by Hezbollah, Iran’s leading terrorist proxy” as part of a global campaign of terror that has reached a dozen countries on five continents.
Hezbollah and Iran have been trying to create terror in countries including Kenya, India and Cyprus, as well as in the United States, where an Iranian tried to kill the Saudi diplomat, he said.
He urged world powers to expose Iran as “the premier terrorist-supporting state that it is” and prevent it from developing “the world’s most dangerous weapons,” a reference to its nuclear program.
“Israel is a strong country, and the Israeli people are a strong people. We will continue to fight against the terrorists and exact a heavy price from those that support them,” Netanyahu vowed.
The Iranian Embassy in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, earlier dismissed Israeli suggestions that Tehran was involved in Wednesday’s attack as “unsubstantiated,” and said the claim was politically motivated.
The Bulgarian bus driver and the suspected suicide bomber also died in the blast.
The identity of the man thought to have put a backpack bomb on the bus remains a mystery, but he carried a U.S. driver’s license from Michigan that FBI officials say was fake, Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov said.
Tsvetanov said that the suspect — who was casually dressed and appeared relaxed — didn’t stand out from other tourists on video footage from the airport.
Fingerprints are being checked and investigators are at the scene of the attack, he said, with the goal of collecting all the evidence and reopening the airport Thursday evening.
Meanwhile, a plane carrying 33 Israelis injured in the blast arrived back in Tel Aviv on Thursday, just a day after those aboard left the city for what should have been a relaxing beach holiday.
Maj. Gen. Dr. Itzik Kreis of the Israel Defense Forces told reporters gathered at the airport that most of those on the plane were in better condition than expected. However, there also were several badly injured victims and one in critical condition, he said.
Three seriously injured Israelis remain in a Sofia hospital, but military medical experts are assessing whether they can be brought home later Thursday.
“I hope that within the next 24 hours we’ll have all the dead and injured home,” he said. “It’s sometimes uncomfortable to be an Israeli, but when a country within 24 hours can bring home all her injured, all her dead, from anywhere in the world, it makes it a bit easier.”
Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned of consequences for those responsible.
“The injured are on their way home in air force planes, with them unfortunately are also the coffins. We are summing up a tough attack, the war against terror continues in full force,” he said.
“We will find those who executed this attack and those who sent them,” he said, insisting that Hezbollah and its backer Iran would not get away with it.
Regarded by the United States and Israel as a terrorist organization, Hezbollah is a Shiite militant group that holds power in the Lebanese government. It is financed and armed by close allies Iran and Syria.
Bulgaria, whose Black Sea beach resorts are a popular destination for Israelis, has not speculated on who might be behind the deadly attack. The country is affordable, not too distant and has, until now, been viewed as a safe place for Israelis to travel.
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