Israeli Embassy Car Bomb Defused

Georgian police defused an explosive device attached to a car of a staff member of the Israeli embassy in Tbilisi on February 13, according to the Georgian Interior Ministry official.

The explosive was attached to a car of a Georgian citizen working for the Israeli embassy in Tbilisi, Shota Utiashvili, head of the Interior Ministry’s information and analytical department, told Civil.ge.

He said that the embassy staffer found the explosive attached to his car and called the police, which defused the bomb before exploding.

Also on February 13 a bomb hit the Israeli embassy car in New Delhi, India and wounded at least one person, reports say.

“There was one attempted attack, and one successful,” Reuters reported quoting a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry Paul Hirschson. “In both cases, the people concerned worked with the Israeli embassies.”
 
The spokesman confirmed that a bomb had been found in a car belonging to a staffer at the embassy in the Georgian capital Tbilisi, which was defused by local police.

The incidents came one day after the fourth anniversary marking the assassination of Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Imad Mughniyah, which the Islamist group blames on Israel.

In February 2011, ahead of the third anniversary of Mughniyah’s assassination, Israeli press was reporting that Israel’s Counterterrorism Bureau warned its citizens to avoid travel to destinations like Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Turkey, Côte d’Ivoire, Mauritania and Venezuela, because of increased threat of terror attacks against Israelis.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the February 13 New Delhi attack and an attempted bomb explosion in Tbilisi.