Islamic Group Appears to Take Credit for Bombing, Plane Crash

BEIRUT —  A little-known Islamic organization calling itself the Partisans of God has indirectly claimed responsibility for the bombing of Jewish organization offices in Argentina and the crash of a plane carrying Jewish businessmen in Panama.

The statement distributed in south Lebanon seems to support Israeli accusations that Lebanese militants with backing from Iran were behind the Buenos Aires attack. And it follows reports that Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite militia that is leading the resistance against Israel in Lebanon, has sought for the first time to expand its operations against Israel outside Lebanon’s borders.

“Suicide martyr squads have been formed to confront and combat Zionism everywhere. The Argentina and Panama operations are evidence of this continuing confrontation,” said the statement from Ansarollah, or Partisans of God, a new group believed by some officials in Lebanon to be linked to Hezbollah. There was no proof of the authenticity of the claim.

The July 18 bombing of a seven-story building that housed offices for two Jewish organizations in Buenos Aires left 46 people dead and more than 60 missing. A day later, a commuter plane exploded and crashed shortly after takeoff in Panama. Two-thirds of the 19 passengers killed were Jews, four of them Israelis.

Hezbollah, or Party of God, has denied any connection to either incident. But the organization has clearly been infuriated by Israeli commandos’ May 21 kidnaping of a Shiite leader near Baalbek and a subsequent air raid on a Hezbollah camp that killed 45 militants.

The heat was turned up even further on Saturday when Israel announced that its soldiers had struck deep within Lebanon on Friday night and kidnaped a second Lebanese militant, Kassem Rehan, accused of aiding Hezbollah guerrillas in attacks against Israeli soldiers.

Little is known about the internal deliberations of Hezbollah or its connections with its Iranian and Syrian backers. But a source close to Hezbollah dissidents said the organization, infuriated by Israel’s recent attacks in Lebanon, has sought to adopt a new strategy for retaliation.

The source said Hezbollah’s secretary general, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, met in Damascus two weeks ago with Syrian officials and Iranian security chief Ali Falahian and unsuccessfully sought authority to unleash a barrage of Katyusha rockets into Israel.

When the measure was vetoed by Syria on the eve of U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher’s peacemaking visit to the region, Nasrallah is said to have broached the subject of hitting Israeli targets “around the world,” according to the source, whose reports could not be independently verified.