The suicide bombing attack in Bulgaria that left five Israelis dead and more than 30 injured Wednesday, July 18, is seen by Israeli and Western intelligence and counter-terror sources as marking Hizballah’s regression to its old tactics. After a 17-year break in major international attacks, the Lebanese terrorist group is again sending suicide killers to murder Israelis and Jews.
In the 1980s, Hizballah was notorious for its massive bomb attacks against US Marines in Lebanon and the US embassy in Beirut, which left more than 300 dead. In the early 1990s, the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina was blown up killing 29 people, followed by the destruction of the Jewish center in the city leaving 85 people.
It is now evident that the old Hizballah is back and fully equipped with suicide killers standing by for action worldwide at the bases of its far-flung terrorist, espionage, dope-smuggling and money laundry networks.
Western counter-terror experts give Israel’s Mossad, Shin Bet and Military Intelligence a failed mark for missing those preparations and not appreciating the significance of the bungled Iranian-backed Hizballah bomb and assassination plots over the past year or two in India, Turkey, Azerhianjan, Thailand, Georgia, Kenya and Cyprus. They were experienced ought to have realized that Hizballah planners were testing the ground and their own methods and analyzing their performance, before concluding that suicide attacks would get them the optimal results, namely, maximum fatalities.
