Bahrain has reported a growing number of attacks using home-made explosives, some of them deadly, in the past two years.
Dubai: Bahrain has seized explosives and bomb-making material smuggled into the country from Iraq and intended to be used in the kingdom and in Saudi Arabia, the Interior Ministry said yesterday.
A statement said that an investigation indicated that the explosives had been smuggled in by two fugitive Bahraini men who live in Iran and who had been sentenced to death in “terrorist” cases.
It identified them as Murtadha Majeed Ramadhan Al Sindi, 32, and Qassem Abdullah Ali, 26. The ministry alleged that Sindi collaborates with Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards Corps and said that Ali “often travels to Iraq”.“They formed and recruited a terrorist group that targets the security of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia,” the statement said.
The ministry said the items seized were very powerful and “would have had the effect of detonating 222 kilos of TNT”.
“The deadly and effective range could have reached hundreds of metres (yards), causing multiple casualties,” it said.
The explosives were seized in a house in the village of Bani Kulaib in western Bahrain, and some matched bomb-making materials seized over the past few years, including in March.
“Analysis and comparison of lab results and evidence from those previous cases pointed to Iran and Iraq as the source of the materials,” the ministry said.
Tiny but strategic Bahrain has seen sporadic violence by Shia groups, including bombings.
Protests still frequently erupt in Shia villages around the capital Manama. Bahrain accuses regional Shia power Iran of interfering in its internal affairs.
AFP
