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Argentina thwarts terror attack on Jewish community

Seven Islamic terrorists were arrested and their homes raided, with large arsenals found.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The Argentine Federal Police thwarted a terror attack on a local Jewish community Friday, the Minister of Security announced in a post on social media Friday.

They were planning attacks in Mendoza [Province],” wrote Patricia Bullrich on X. “In 8 raids, the PFA dismantled a dangerous organization linked to a radical Islamic terrorist group, identified after threatening a journalist from the Jewish community.”

“The person responsible was identified, and then the group was identified,” she added, and “the police brought them all to justice.”

“We are going to get rid of each and every one of these criminals who try to sow fear in Argentines and they will pay,” the minister concluded.

Seven suspects were arrested in all, with some caught at the Cristo Redentor border crossing with Chile and at Ezeiza International Airport in the capital, Buenos Aires. None of their identities has been revealed as yet.

Although the authorities were sparse on the details of the arrests, from their locations it was speculated that the suspects were trying to leave the country.

Their homes were raided and a large number of weapons were found, including shotguns, rifles and handguns, knives and daggers.

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The authorities also confiscated cellphones and computers and Islamic texts of Salafist origin that attested to their violent ideology.

Besides planning physical attacks, the group had been spreading hate messages on social media through WhatsApp and Telegram, against both Christians and Jews, using extreme terminology common to such terror organizations as Islamic State and the Taliban.

According to the Spanish press, the investigation began after an umbrella group of local Jewish communities, the Community Assistance Department of the Delegation of Argentine Israelite Associations (DAIA) reported the threats against a Jewish reporter.

Argentina is home to the largest Jewish community in Latin America, estimated at some 180,000 – 220,000 people.

The vast majority live in Buenos Aires, but there are small communities in several provinces.

In July 1994, a Hezbollah terrorist drove a van laden with explosives into the AMIA Jewish community center in the capital, killing 85 people and injuring over 300 when the building collapsed. It remains the deadliest terror attack in Argentinian history.

In March 1992, the Iran-backed Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for a suicide truck bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, which killed 29 and wounded 242.

In both cases, the vast majority of those killed and wounded were not Jewish.

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In 2006 several senior Iranian officials were indicted for their roles in the attacks by their terror proxies, including former president Hashemi Rafsanjani. Two others, commanders in the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, are ministers in the country’s current Cabinet.

In April, Argentina’s second highest court ruled again that the Iranian government was responsible for both of them, and the government requested that Interpol arrest one of the two, Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi.