Envoy says Thai blast devices similar

• Tweet

BANGKOK, Feb. 15 (UPI) -- Devices found in a Bangkok home after explosions there were similar to those used in attacks in India and Georgia, Israel's envoy to Thailand said Wednesday.

Three blasts rocked a busy section of Thailand's capital Tuesday, wounding five people including a suspect who lost his legs.

The attacks occurred a day after a bomb attached to a car of the Israeli embassy in New Delhi exploded, wounding the wife of an Israeli diplomat and three others. A similar attack in Tbilisi, Georgia, was averted when the vehicle's driver found a device and it was defused.

Investigators in Thailand found explosives in a Bangkok home where the first blast occurred.

"It's almost the same system that was used in Delhi and in Tbilisi, which leads us to think that they are connected," Israeli Ambassador to Thailand Itzhak Shoham told The New York Times in a telephone interview.

Israel has blamed Iran for the New Delhi and Tbilisi attacks, and its defense minister was quoted as saying the incident in Bangkok also proved Iran's role. In Tehran, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast condemned the Bangkok blasts and blamed them on the "Zionist regime," Iran's Islamic Republic News Agency said.

Thai police said it was too early to draw any links to the explosion and grenade blasts, the Times said.

Thai authorities arrested two suspects, including the wounded man, both reportedly carrying Iranian passports, and were searching for two others.

Ambassador Shoham told the Times the devices found in the Bangkok home used the same type of explosive as those in New Delhi and Tbilisi, and similarly had magnets so they can be attached to metal objects.