Update on terrorist attack against Israeli tourists in Bulgaria: Suicide bomber identified

Yesterday afternoon seven people were killed, five of them Israelis, and 34 wounded, when a blast tore through a bus shuttling Israeli tourists at the airport in the Bulgarian city of Burgas. Most of those on board were teens.

The injured included an 11-year-old girl and two pregnant women.

An investigation by Bulgarian authorities – in conjunction with the FBI, CIA and Israeli authorities – indicates that the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber.

Here’s a video taken at the scene shortly after the attack.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlirHv45KEs]

Wednesday’s incident began when a Bulgarian flight from Israel landed at the local airport. The passengers – 151 Israelis and three foreign nationals – then boarded buses transporting them to their hotels. An hour later a bomb went off in one of the buses. 

Some of the passengers were thrown from the burning bus by the force of the blast, while others jumped from the windows to escape the flames.

Per the Jerusalem Post:

“One young woman, Gal Malka, who flew to Bulgaria on a vacation before being drafted into the IDF, told Channel Two by phone from the scene, “We got on the bus. There were a lot of people on it… Suddenly someone got on there, and something exploded. We heard a boom. And we actually saw body parts. We tried to escape. The door was closed. But there was a hole in the side, through which me and my friend escaped.”

Malka said there were bodies all around her, and that many people were screaming. She said she bandaged a man who was suffering heavy bleeding from his head.

After the earth-shattering blast, “I opened my eyes and saw that everything around me was fire,” Malka later told Ynet.”

Two Israeli Air Force C-130 Hercules aircrafts landed in Burgas this morning – with an IDF delegation including 12 doctors –  to treat the Israelis injured in the attack and transport them back to Israel.  

Prime Minister Netanyahu blamed the latest attack on Iran (likely via their proxy terrorist group, Hezbollah), as the bombing took place on the 18th anniversary of the Iranian terror attack on a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires which killed 87 people and injured over 100.

The following are pictures of Israeli survivors of the attack leaving a hospital in Burgas after treatment.

 

UPDATE: Bulgarian Police have released a video of the alleged suicide bomber.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMm35QiNf7s]

 

UPDATE II: The suicide bomber is now being named as Mehdi Ghezali, an Algerian-Swedish Islamist.

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