MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Israel has eliminated most of terrorists involved in deadly attacks on Jewish targets in Argentina

Ambassador Aviran: “the large majority of those responsible are no longer of this world, and we did it ourselves”

Israel has killed most of the terrorists who perpetrated deadly attacks on its embassy and a Jewish community center in Argentina in the 1990s, Israel's former Ambassador to Argentina Yitzhak Aviran told the Spanish-language Jewish news agency Agencia Judia de Noticias on Thursday.

 With his comments, Aviran broke Israel's policy of ambiguity, which it maintains on such matters.

The July 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center building in Buenos Aires killed 85 people and left over 300 wounded. Argentina has declared that the bombings were masterminded by Iran, while the regime in Tehran has denied any involvement.

Two years earlier, in March 1992, a car bombing in front of the Embassy of Israel in Buenos Aires killed 29 and wounded 200 others.

An AFP report quoted Aviran as saying, “the large majority of those responsible are no longer of this world, and we did it ourselves.”

Neither Carlos Menem, Argentina's president from 1989 to 1999, nor his successor Fernando de la Rúa and those who followed “did anything to get to the bottom of this tragedy,” Aviran is reported as saying.

“We still need an answer [from the Argentine government] on what happened,” he added. “We know who the perpetrators of the embassy bombing were, and they did it a second time.”

In January of 2013, the Foreign Ministry summoned Argentine Ambassador to Israel Atilio Norberto Molteni to protest Argentina's announcement it had agreed with Iran to commission a joint independent investigation of the AMIA bombing.

“We were surprised by the news,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told AFP at the time. “We are waiting to receive full details from the Argentines on what is going on because this subject is obviously directly related to Israel.”

In 2007, Argentine authorities secured Interpol arrest warrants for five Iranians and a Lebanese national in the bombing of the AMIA center. Former Iranian Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi is among the Iranian officials sought by Argentina, home to Latin America's largest Jewish community.