JERUSALEM: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday blamed Iran for attacks on Israeli embassy staff in Georgia and India that wounded at least two people, one of them an Israeli woman.
"Iran is behind these attacks. It is the biggest exporter of terror in the world," Netanyahu told members of his rightwing Likud party.
The Israeli leader said there had been a number of attempts to harm Israelis and Jews in recent months, in places such as Thailand and Azerbaijan, in a series of attacks coordinated by Tehran and Lebanon's Shiite militia Hezbollah.
"In all these incidents, those responsible were Iran and its protege Hezbollah," he said.
Israel would continue to act "with a firm hand" to stamp out "international terror coming from Iran," he said.
His remarks were made shortly after a car outside the Israeli embassy in New Delhi exploded in a ball of fire, injuring two people, one of whom was an Israeli woman, Netanyahu said.
Separately, the Georgian interior ministry confirmed that police in the capital Tbilisi had defused an explosive device found in the car of an Israeli embassy employee.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said the attacks proved that Israelis both at home and abroad were "a target for terrorists."
"We are facing physical terror as well as political terror on a daily basis," Lieberman said in a statement, in which he said Israel knew "how to identify those who are responsible."
"These attacks also remind us of the fact that Israeli diplomats are on the front lines of the campaign that Israel is dealing with around the world."
The attacks came between the anniversaries of the deaths of two top Hezbollah militants, Imad Mughniyeh and Abbas Mussawi, which spark annual travel warnings from the Israeli government.
The deaths of both men were blamed on Israel and sparked vows of revenge from Hezbollah, which has close ties with Iran.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.