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Bangkok Explosions Update: Photo of Iranian Woman Reportedly Wanted by Police (February 16, 2012)

2012 02 16 bkk post iranian woman

Today’s Bangkok Post reports:

The suspects involved in Tuesday’s multiple bombings in Bangkok were part of the same network of terror involved in bomb incidents in India and Georgia earlier this week, according to Itzhak Shoham, Israeli ambassador to Thailand.

While the target of the bombs was not clear, “we can assume from the other experiences that we were the target,” he said.

And the Post is running the photo, above, of an Iranian woman reportedly wanted by police:

Police investigators yesterday sought court arrest warrants for all three Iranian suspects being held in custody, as well as an Iranian woman, Rohani Leila, who is suspected of having arranged for the rental of the Sukhumvit Soi 71 home.

Elsewhere, Bloomberg reports:

Iranians arrested after blasts on a Bangkok street aimed to attack Israeli diplomats, and the devices used were similar to bombs targeting Israelis in India and Georgia this week, according to Thailand’s police chief.

“The suspects targeted Israeli diplomats in Thailand,” Priewphan Damaphong told reporters in Bangkok yesterday, hours after he confirmed that the Bangkok bombs contained magnets designed to attach to vehicles. India’s initial investigations suggest that a magnetic device was attached to an Israeli diplomat’s car on Feb. 13 in New Delhi seconds before it exploded injuring the woman, the city’s police commissioner, B.K. Gupta, has said.

“The type of explosive device is similar to the incident in India,” Priewphan told reporters in Bangkok. The men “were not targeting a place.”

Meanwhile, the WSJ says:

Some terrorism analysts experts, such as Will Hartley, head of the Terrorism & Insurgency Center at IHS Jane’s, question whether Iran really is behind all of the attacks. He noted that the attacks appeared amateurish and inconsistent with campaigns masterminded by the Iranian military’s elite Quds Force or Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group that is supported by Iran.

Others, though, suggest the recent wave of bombings shows that Iran is willing to use any means possible to demonstrate to Israel and the U.S. that it is willing to strike anywhere in the world, even if it means outsourcing attacks to less-experienced operatives.

“This is Iran’s way of responding to pressure,” said Rohan Gunaratna, head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. “These are low-tech, unsophisticated attacks and sometimes poorly executed. But they are designed to show that the reach of Iran and its proxies is increasing….I think we will see further attacks.”

(All emphasis mine.)

(Image: Bangkok Post.)

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