Jewish & World News

Bulgarian Minister of Interior Tsvetan Tsvetanov has reiterated his claim that two of the terrorists who carried out the bombing attack on a bus filled with Israeli tourists in the Black Sea resort town of Burgas in July 2012 are Hezbollah operatives. "The Burgas bombers were maintaining part of Hezbollah's structures in Canada and Australia and had contacts with other representatives of this organization," said Tsvetanov in an interview for TV7 on Friday.

Bulgaria's interior minister says his country has given Europol the names of the two people suspected in a bus bombing that killed five Israeli tourists last year. Tsvetan Tsvetanov spoke on the phone from The Hague, where he met Tuesday with Rob Wainwright, director of Europol, an agency that coordinates national police across the European Union.

A correspondent for the Financial Times apologized for suggesting that Israel may have bribed Bulgaria to frame Hezbollah. “Sincere apologies and regret for ill-conceived tweet yesterday about Israel and Bulgaria,” Borzou Daragahi, the London-based newspaper's Middle East and North Africa correspondent, wrote Wednesday on Twitter.

Two individuals with links to Lebanon's Shi'ite group Hezbollah were involved in a bomb attack on a bus in the Bulgarian resort of Burgas that killed five Israeli tourists last July, Bulgaria's interior minister said on Tuesday. The conclusions of the Bulgarian investigation may open the way for the European Union to join the United States in branding the Iranian-backed Hezbollah a terrorist organization since there is now a clear connection to an attack on EU territory.

"Out of thousands of people, we need to find four or five," Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov said on Friday in reference to the police investigation into the terror attack that killed five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver in the resort city of Burgas. In an interview with Bulgarian news website Novointe, Tsvetanov estimated that "the probe might take years."

Israel has evidence of many telephone calls between Lebanon and Burgas in the two months before the bombing that killed six people, The New York Times reported. The volume of calls intensified in the three days before the attack on a bus carrying Israeli tourists, the newspaper reported Thursday, citing an unnamed senior government official, pointing the finger even more directly -- in Israel's eyes -- at the terror group Hezbollah.

The fatal bombing that targeted Israeli tourists at Bulgaria's Burgas airport last month was planned abroad, but the explosive device was likely made in Bulgaria, a top Interior Ministry official said Saturday. "I can definitely say that the attack was plotted, prepared and implemented by people who are very far away from Bulgaria," Ministry Chief of Staff Kalin Georgiev told Bulgaria's 24 Hours newspaper in an interview.

A computer-generated image of the suicide bomber who killed five Israeli tourists and a local bus driver in mid-July, has been verified to a level of 95 percent accuracy, the Bulgarian Interior Minister said on Wednesday according to the Bulgarian Sofia News Agency. "The badly damaged face of the bomber was reconstructed thanks to modern technology, supplied to Bulgaria by partner services," Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov informed the press, the report said.

Arab MK Hanin Zoabi (Balad), notorious for her attacks on the State of Israel despite her being a member of its parliament, is at it again. Zoabi, who appeared in a public discussion forum at the Gordon College of Education in Haifa on Thursday, said that just as Israel demands to hold a minute of silence in memory of the 11 athletes who were murdered at the 1972 Munich Olympics, there should also be a minute of silence for Palestinian Authority Arabs who were killed by Israel.

Iran's UN envoy accused Israel on Wednesday of plotting and carrying out a suicide bomb attack on a bus in Bulgaria a week ago in which five Israeli tourists were killed. A suicide bomber blew up the bus in a car park at Burgas airport, a popular gateway for tourists visiting Bulgaria's Black Sea coast, killing himself, the Israeli tourists and the Bulgarian bus driver and wounding more than 30 people. Israel has accused Iran and the Lebanese Islamist group Hezbollah of the bombing. Iran has denied the accusations.

The Bulgarian Chief Mufti's Office has published a statement of complaint over prevailing anti-Muslim sentiment following the suicide bombing at the Burgas airport that killed five Israelis and one Bulgarian citizen, who happened to be of Muslim descent, the Bulgarian news site Novinite reported Wednesday. "Terror is definitely not accepted by Islam regardless of its goal and cause. There is an emblematic saying by Islamic thinkers that terror has no religion, and that there is no terror in religion," the statement read.

Bulgaria and Israel have held a memorial service honoring the memory of the six victims of the July 18 terrorist attack in the Black Sea city of Burgas that cost the lives of 5 Israelis and 1 Bulgarian. The July 18 terrorist attack in Bulgaria's Burgas, also known as the Burgas Bus Bombing, killed 5 Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver at the Sarafovo Airport near Burgas.

Bulgaria has received 32 charter flights from Israel, Bulgarian Economy Minister Delyan Dobrev said Monday, referring to the July 18 terrorist attack in Burgas in which a suicide bomber killed 5 Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver. Dobrev spoke after meeting with Israel's Minister of Tourism Stas Misezhnikov who came to Bulgarian for a one-day visit to reaffirm the bilateral ties after the terrorist attack at the Sarafovo Airport in Burgas that made global headlines; the attack's victims were Israeli tourists heading to the Sunny Beach resort.

The suicide bomber in last week's deadly attack on Israeli tourists in Bulgaria entered from neighboring Romania, spoke decent Russian and had a female companion, local media reported on Monday. Citing investigators probing last Wednesday's bombing of a bus at Burgas airport that killed five Israeli tourists and the driver, television channel bTV said that the attacker was in the city of Varna for at least a day before the bombing.

Bulgarian police have widened their investigation into last week's bombing attack on Israeli tourists to towns near the border with Romania, asking hotels for surveillance video that might have captured the suspected bomber. Hotels in the Black Sea coastal city of Varna say police have been asking for video showing a particular suspect and are giving a sketch of the suspect to management.

The European Network against Racism (ENAR) has demanded that the so-called Lukov March scheduled to take place in Sofia is canceled. The NGO has sent a letter to Sofia Mayor Yordanka Fandakova and Bulgaria's Ombudsman Konstantin Penchev demanding the cancellation of the neo-Nazi torch procession that commemorate a Bulgarian general.

A Greek-Jewish umbrella group asked a United Nations body to make clear when commemorating Bulgaria 's rescue of its own Jews the country's role in the genocide of Greek Jews. "Bulgarians saved their country’s Jews in exchange for the Jews of the other territories under their control," said the letter sent Jan 26 from the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece to the United Nations Department of Public Information/Non Governmental Organizations. "In the name of the historical memory of our brothers, victims of the Bulgarian atrocities in our country during the Holocaust, we ask you to include this small and 'untold' part of history in your briefing."

Worried mobile phone bosses in Bulgaria have shelved the number 0888 888 888 because everyone who has had it the past 10 years has died in horrific circumstances, Britain's The Daily Mail reported Tuesday.

Volen Siderov, leader of Bulgaria's ultra-nationalist Ataka party, said in a television interview that a jailed organized crime head provided foreign diplomats, including Israeli embassy employees, with prostitutes.

Anti-Semitic graffiti was spray-painted on the walls of a Jewish school in the capital of Bulgaria. A Star of David equated with a Nazi swastika and the words "stop occupation" were spray-painted on the wall of the Dimcho Debeljanov Jewish School, the only Jewish school in Sofia.