Bulgarian president says Mossad gave no warning of possible attack

Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev said on Wednesday that officials from Israel’s Mossad spy agency gave no warning of a pending terror attack on their soil when they met with Bulgarian officials a month ago, according to the Bulgarian Sofia News Agency.

On Wednesday afternoon, a bomb exploded on a bus filled with Israeli tourists at Sarafovo International Airport in the Bulgarian vacation city of Burgas, killing eight people, five of them Israeli. More than 30 were injured, two of them critically.

Had the Bulgarians been warned of a possible attack, Plevneliev said that they would have acted accordingly to prevent it. Plevneliev stressed that the communications between Israel and Bulgaria are very good, and that his country is taking all necessary measures for the surviving victims of the attack.

On Thursday morning, Defense Minister Ehud Barak defended the Mossad, saying the agency hands over any information it has on events like this. He called the absence of hard information ahead of the attack a “problem” rather than a “failure.” He said that it was reasonable that agents had no actionable intelligence on this attack ahead of time as they did on attempts in Thailand and Cypress recently.

Speaking to Israel Radio, Barak added that the attack was the work of Hezbollah terrorists working under the aegis of Iran and that Israel would do all it can to bring the perpetrators to justice.