A suspect in the last year’s bombing of the World Trade Center in Manhattan is now being linked to an attempted bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand.
The would-be suicide attack, which experts reportedly say could have caused damage over a half-mile radius, was averted March II when the driver of a bomb-filled truck ran into a motorcyclist.
The driver fled the scene of the traffic accident, which was less than a half-mile from the Israeli Embassy.
Not until a week later was the close call discovered, when police found a ton of explosives hidden in a water tank on the back of the truck.
Also found in the water tank was the body of a Thai driver who had delivered the rented truck to the perpetrators.
According to the Nation, an English-language daily in Bangkok, a high-ranking local police source identified one of the terrorists as Ramzi Yousef, one of three terrorists who remain at large after allegedly carrying out the bomb attack on the World Trade Center on Feb. 26 last year.
Security had already been ordered increased around the Embassy and the Bangkok synagogue, in the wake of last month’s massacre of Palestinians in Hebron.
The bomb found in the truck was made of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, diesel oil and C-4 explosives — a mixture similar to that used in the World Trade Center bombing.
Thai police found 25 sacks of ammonium nitrate on March 18 in an abandoned house, which the landlord said had been rented to a group of Arab men.
Police lifted fingerprints from the house, which they said would be useful in identifying the terrorists.
At least four people were involved in assembling the bomb, according to the police, who added it was likely that some Thais were involved since it would have been difficult for foreigners to obtain all the bomb’s ingredients without local help.
Bangkok’s Metropolitan Police commissioner, Chaisit Kanchanakit, said he met with Israeli Embassy officials on Monday and that they had agreed to send anti-terrorism experts to help in the investigation.
Members of an American anti-terrorist unit reportedly will also assist in the investigation.
Suspicion is currently focused on several fundamentalist groups opposed to any regional peace initiatives with Israel.
In 1992, members of a fundamentalist group detonated a bomb in from of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires. Twenty people were killed instantly and 240 wounded in the incident.
The explosives used in that attack were of the same type found in the truck in Bangkok, according to local news reports.
Because of Passover, the JTA Dally News Bulletin will not be published either Monday, March 28 or Tuesday, March 29.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
