Bulgaria Says Suicide Bombing Probe 'Encouraging'

A month after the suicide bombing of an Israeli tourist bus in Bulgaria, investigators have made no major breakthroughs but progress has been encouraging, the country's interior minister told Agence France Presse Friday.

"It is only expected that it will take time, sometimes years, to uncover the whole mechanism behind the attack. But we are encouraged by the work we accomplished in the last 30 days," Tsvetan Tsvetanov said in an interview.

He said that the "foreigner" bomber, who killed five Israeli tourists and the Bulgarian bus driver as well as himself in the July 18 attack at Burgas airport, had been in Bulgaria since June 29.

Tsvetanov also said the release this week of a computer-generated image of the assailant's suspected accomplice followed the discovery a week earlier of a fake U.S. driving license similar to that found on the bomber.

"The two were made in the same place, outside Bulgaria and I can also say outside Europe," the minister said Friday.

He added that valuable information has also come from analysis of the bomb itself, saying that parts of it resembled "a device used in such an attack in a different country," without saying which attack or which country.

"This adds to the conclusion that it could have been made abroad. Of course, the possibility remains to find the same chemical substances on Bulgarian territory," he added.

Israel has blamed Iran and Hizbullah for the attack, the deadliest on Israelis abroad since 2004, although Bulgaria has said that there is no evidence of this. Iran has denied any involvement.