Security footage shows man roaming Sarafovo airport for more than an hour before attack on Israeli tourist bus
Bulgarian police released images on Thursday of a man with long hair, wearing shorts and a T-shirt and said to be carrying a fake American passport, who they believe was the suicide bomber responsible for the attack on an Israeli tourist bus, in which he and six others were killed.
Security footage from Sarafovo Airport terminal shows the man roaming the airport for more than an hour before Wednesday's attack, apparently waiting for the Israeli tourists. A badly damaged body was subsequently found at the scene with the US passport and a Michigan drivers license.
Five Israelis were killed and 34 injured, three critically, in the blast. Within an hour Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu had laid the blame on Iran.
He described the explosion as part of a global war of terror waged by the Islamic republic and its proxy, Hezbollah. He called world leaders asking them to stand with Israel against the "number one state exporter of terrorism."
Shimon Peres, Israel's president, said that the country would strike out in retaliation at "terror nests'' around the world.
"We were witnesses to a deadly terror attack coming out of Iran... we know there were other attempts, and this time they succeeded," he said. "[Israel] has the means and the will to silence and paralyse terror organisations."
Iran has vehemently denied any involvement in the attack in the Black Sea tourist resort. Tehran issued a statement through its embassy in Bulgaria on Thursday. "The unfounded statements by different statesmen of the Zionist regime in connection with the accusations against Iran about its possible participation in the incident with the blown-up bus with Israeli tourists in Burgas is a familiar method of the Zionist regime, with a political aim, and is a sign of the weakness... of the accusers," it read.
The attack took place soon after the Israelis boarded a bus outside the airport in Burgas, a popular destination for Israeli tourists. Bulgarian television showed footage from the airport of the suspected bomber wandering in and out of the terminal shortly before the blast, dressed as a tourist in a baseball cap, T-shirt, plaid shorts and trainers with short white socks and carrying a large backpack with wheels. Officials said the bomb went off in the luggage compartment of the bus as the attacker mingled among his victims.
Bulgarian interior minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov said the bomber was believed to have been about 36 years old and had been in the country between four and seven days. "We cannot exclude the possibility that he had logistical support on Bulgarian territory," the minister said. He declined to elaborate.
Officials are using DNA samples to try to establish his identity. Bulgarian prime minister Boiko Borisov told reporters that a Michigan driver's licence was retrieved from the scene, but he said US officials reported that "there was no such person in their database."
The Israelis had arrived on a charter flight from Tel Aviv carrying 154 people, including eight children. Survivors told Israeli television that they had been boarding the white bus in the airport parking lot to ride to their hotel when the blast occurred.
Israel's military said a military plane carrying 33 Israelis injured in the bombing arrived in Israel on Thursday. At least two critically injured Israelis were sent to Sofia for treatment, according to the head of the Israeli military medical corps, Brigadier General Itzik Kreis.
A Bulgarian government plane will fly home 100 other uninjured Israelis who want to cut short their vacation.
Bulgarian authorities on Thursday dispatched 200 police to hotels where about 1,000 Israelis were staying just north of Burgas. A representative of the Ortanna tour company said about 10,000 Israelis had booked vacations in Bulgaria through the firm this summer and about half had cancelled after the attack.
Israeli leaders say the attack bore the fingerprints of a combined Iranian and Hezbollah operation, comparing it to a recently thwarted attack by a Hezbollah operative in Cyprus and a series of simultaneous attempted bomb attacks on Israeli diplomatic targets in February.
In February, Israel responded with restraint. Today, Jerusalem's rhetoric promises retribution."We hurt Imad Mughniyah a few years ago and mostly we are in a battle against Iran," Uzi Arad, a former national security adviser told Israeli Army Radio. He was referring to the alleged Israeli assassination of Hezbollah leader Mughniyah, who died in a mysterious explosion in Damascus in 2008.
The suicide attack in Bulgaria coincided with the 18th anniversary of the 1994 bombing of the Jewish Centre in Buenos Aires, an attack masterminded by Mughniyah in which 85 people were killed and hundreds injured. The coincidence will not have been lost on the Israeli leadership.
Yoram Schweitzer, a senior analyst at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, backed Netanyahu's accusation of Iran. "We are still in the initial stages of the aftermath of the attack. But when I hear the prime minister of Israel solidifying a statement such as this, it must be based on solid intelligence," he said.
The attack comes as fighting has escalated in Syria, threatening destabilisation across the Middle East.
Addressing reporters in the Golan Heights on Thursday, just miles from Syria, Ehud Barak said that Israel would act to prevent 'waves of Syrian refugees' entering the country.
"We obviously are not the only player in the region that is anxious … about the fact that an anarchic situation will bring about the transfer of sensitive systems into the wrong hands," Barak explained.
"There is no small amount of chemical weapons dispersed all around the country and there is a lot of weaponry in the hands of the civilians. The rebel forces started attacking and taking over military bases and are seizing weapons for their own use."
IBurgas airport was closed on Thursday. In Sofia, mayor Yordanka Fandakova ordered a stronger police presence at all public places linked to the Jewish community. Some 5,000 Jews live in Bulgaria, most in Sofia. As reports emerged on Thursday that Bashar al-Assad and his wife had fled their base in Damascus, the IDF reacted with anxiety. Commando police units and ambulances were placed on alert along the country's northern border. Lebanese media reported that Israeli fighter planes were conducting mock raids over Marjayoun near its southern border with the Jewish state.
Uzi Rabi, director of the Dayan Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University, conceded that Israel's position was precarious.
"Syria as a failed state poses a great threat. It already harbours Islamic Jihad and al-Qaeda. Israel cannot afford to allow the dual threats of this new Syria and Iran," he said.