ISRAELI experts said yesterday the amateurishness of the Atlanta Olympics bombing suggested it was more likely the work of an angry or frustrated American than international guerrillas.
"Because of the amateurish charge and it appears to be something improvised we believe it's not any sort of complex organisation or an international terrorist organisation that did this," Mr David Tsur, an Israeli adviser to Olympic authorities, told Israel Radio from Atlanta.
Although careful to say the investigation could take "a whole lot of directions", Mr Tsur speculated the bomber was "a frustrated citizen" or "redneck who hates the establishment".
"It seems more a local initiative which is part of the domestic terrorism in the United States that has become more and more troubling," said Mr Tsur, a former commander of Israeli police special forces dealing with hijackings and hostage situations.
Israelis pride themselves on their experience at fighting guerrillas and their expertise is in international demand.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, a former UN ambassador who has written three books on fighting "terrorism", was elected in May on a promise to get tough with Islamic suicide bombers who killed 59 people in Israel in February and March.
Israelis related the bombing to their own Olympic nightmare 24 years ago when Palestinian guerrillas hijacked the Munich games and 11 Israeli sportsmen were killed.
But there the similarities end, Mr Tsur said.
"Munich is not exactly in my opinion the right example. It's correct these are the only times that at sporting events there were showcase attacks. But Munich was different in substance from the present attack," he said.
"Here there was an attack in a public centre connected to the Olympics. But there is no resemblance [here] to the infiltration [in Munich] of the Olympic Village.
He said it was hard to know who carried out the attack since despite the telephone warning to police of a man the FBI said was apparently a white American there was no claim of responsibility by any group or cause.
"According to all the signs, it's the work of an amateur," said Prof Ehud Sprinzak of the Hebrew University.
"The world is full of lunatics and people who are awfully angry, he told the radio.
Dr Sprinzak distinguished the bombing from the unsolved blast 10 days earlier that brought down a TWA airliner off New York, killing 230 people.
"There's no sort of link. No pipe can blow up a plane and there are truly no signs that it's the same target. It's definitely another story altogether," Dr Sprinzak said.
Interviewed by Israel Army Radio, Mr Tsur said no other devices had been located at any Olympic venue despite about 100 subsequent calls reporting charges or suspicious objects. Mr Tsur praised Atlanta security forces for their response saying that a policeman's quick detection of the bomb "prevented a far greater disaster".
