Bulgaria released on Thursday video footage of a man it suspects carried out a suicide attack on a bus full of Israeli tourists that killed six people and left three seriously injured.
The video shows a white man with long blond hair -- possibly a wig -- wearing sunglasses and wandering in and out of the terminal shortly before the blast. He was dressed as a tourist himself, wearing a baseball cap, T-shirt, plaid shorts and sneakers with short white socks. He carried a large backpack with wheels.
Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov said the man looked to be aged around 26. The authorities had his fingerprints and were testing for DNA with the help of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), he said.
"His travel document was a fake driving licence from the (US) state of Michigan ... (His) identity has not yet been established," the minister said.
According to him, the man had been in the country between four and seven days.
"We cannot exclude the possibility that he had logistical support on Bulgarian territory," the minister said. He declined to elaborate.
The explosion ripped through the bus as around 50 Israeli tourists arriving from Tel Aviv on a plane carrying 154 people were loading their bags and boarding before travelling to a nearby Black Sea holiday and gambling resort.
Five of the tourists died at the scene while the vehicle's Bulgarian driver died in hospital, officials said, revising downwards an earlier toll of six killed plus the bomber.
The attack also wounded some 30 people, three of them seriously.
Witnesses described how panicked passengers jumped from bus windows and bodies lay strewn on the ground with their clothes torn off as ambulance sirens wailed and black smoke rose over the airport.
"We are facing a global wave of terror... the attack in Burgas was led by members of Hezbollah and sponsored by Iran," Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak told public radio.
"Israel will do all it can to find those responsible and punish them, both those who carried it out directly and those who dispatched them."
"The Al-Qaeda and Islamic Jihad networks also operate globally," he added, citing a long list of recent attacks or attempted attacks on Israelis around the world including in Thailand, India, Georgia, Kenya and Cyprus.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Iran and Hezbollah have been carrying out a "global terror campaign" for more than a year that has targeted Israelis and others.
Last week, Cypriot authorities said they had arrested a 24-year-old man on suspicion of planning terror attacks. Cypriot radio said he was of Lebanese origin and carrying a Swedish passport.
The US "will stand with our allies, and provide whatever assistance is necessary to identify and bring to justice the perpetrators of this attack," said US President Barack Obama, who expressed his condolences to Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli premier.
Iranian state television said Israel's "ridiculous" accusations were "aimed at creating an anti-Iranian atmosphere" amid rising tensions over Tehran's suspected nuclear weapons drive.
"The Islamic republic, the biggest victim of terrorism, believes terrorism endangers the lives of innocents... is inhumane and so strongly condemns" it, foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said on television.
The bomber struck on the 18th anniversary of an attack on a Jewish community centre in Argentina that killed 85 people, also blamed on Iran.
Wednesday's attack also drew strong condemnation from France, Britain, Russia and others.
Except for three people transferred to the capital Sofia, the other injured were taken to Burgas airport on Thursday morning amid a heavy police presence, to be flown home to Israel, an AFP reporter at the scene said.
They included a pregnant woman and a girl of around seven or eight years old who was carrying her flip-flop because her right foot was wrapped in bandages.
Around half of the injured were teenagers. Many were brought out to the ambulances in wheelchairs with many having sustained burns and flesh wounds on their legs and arms. Some still had blood-stained holiday clothes on.
Around 20 Israeli paramedics arrived overnight to help treat the wounded. Apart from the flight back to Israel, Burgas airport remained closed on Thursday morning.
The Israeli foreign ministry said 34 people wounded in the blast were being flown back to Israel. The bodies were also being repatriated.
Israel's military said a military plane carrying them Israelis injured in the bombing arrived Thursday in Israel. A Bulgarian government plane will fly home 100 other Israelis who were not wounded but who want to cut short their vacation.
Bulgarian authorities Thursday dispatched 200 police to hotels where about 1,000 Israelis were staying just north of Burgas. A representative of the Ortanna tour company said about 10,000 Israelis had booked vacations in Bulgaria through the firm this summer and about half had canceled after the attack.
On Thursday the charred skeleton of the bus was loaded onto a truck and taken away, as was an adjacent bus that also caught fire and which had a large blood stain down its side.
Israel and former communist Bulgaria, which has a 13-percent Muslim population, enjoy very good relations and the Black Sea coast has become a popular holiday spot for Israelis, with almost 140,000 visiting the country in 2011.
In January, Israeli public television reported that authorities in European Union member Bulgaria had foiled a bomb attack when they found an explosive device on a bus chartered to take Israeli tourists to a ski resort.
In Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, the mayor ordered a stronger police presence at all public places linked to the Jewish community.
Some 5,000 Jews live in Bulgaria, most in the capital.

EJP