For the Secretary of Human Rights of Argentina, the attack on the AMIA could have been avoided 0:31
(CNN Spanish) --
On March 17, 1992, the center of the city of Buenos Aires, capital of Argentina, was violently shaken by an explosion that leveled the Israeli embassy building.
It was the first of two major terrorist attacks against the Jewish community in the country in 1992 and 1994, when another bomb exploded in the Jewish mutual society AMIA, and which are still unpunished in the Argentine justice system.
Ambassador of Israel: "Those responsible for the AMIA attack are in Iran and Lebanon"
In the attack against the Israeli embassy, located in the Retiro neighborhood in Buenos Aires, 29 people died and hundreds were injured.
Firefighters and rescue personnel continue to dig through the ruins of the Israeli Embassy in the early hours of March 18, 1992 in Buenos Aires.
(Credit: DANIEL LUNA/AFP via Getty Images)
The bomb exploded at 2:45 pm (3:45 ET) and caused the collapse of the building, where the embassy had functioned since 1950, and in its place there is now a square with trees that remember the victims of the attack.
Martin Goldberg, a former embassy official, was one of the survivors.
"My bodily sensation was that I suddenly felt that I was electrocuting myself, literally, and I associated it with the fact that at that moment the Embassy was undergoing repairs, I thought that I had touched some cable that had been left bare and was electrocuting me and as if I was dying electricity," he told CNN.
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"There I will have flown about two, three meters and well, everything went dark there, very quiet and it began to be missing like the air".
Only 22 of the 29 victims could be identified.
Iranians with stolen passports are brought to justice 2:58
"It was what one saw in Lebanon, the church across the street, let's say, all destroyed, the cars overturned and all on fire, people running, people taken out and people... Pieces of bodies on the floor. It was something that we couldn't understand it," Goldberg said.
Nelly Durán, widow of one of the victims, told CNN how the search for her husband, a worker, went: “We began to search the different hospitals where the wounded arrived.
I remember running after the ambulances at the Rivadavia Hospital, because I remember that they had said, that it is close here, that many had been taken there.
I arrive and run out to look, but well, we started looking in different places.
It wasn't on the charts, it didn't appear."
The Supreme Court of Justice of Argentina was in charge of the investigation, since it was an embassy, and it was proven that a car bomb was used and that the Islamic extremist movement Hezbollah was responsible.
But so far no one has been arrested or prosecuted.
A file photo dated March 17, 1992 in Buenos Aires shows the destruction of the Israeli embassy in Argentina after a massive attack.
(Credit: DANIEL GARCIA/AFP via Getty Images)
"The conclusion (of Israel) is similar to Argentina, which was Hezbollah and was Iran. As I say, there is no secret, right? It's like you always talk about memory, truth and justice. We were talking about memory. The truth is also known. We lack justice," Galit Ronen, current Israeli ambassador to Argentina, told CNN.
The Iranian government has adamantly denied involvement in the Israeli embassy and AMIA bombings.
Two years later, on July 18, 1994, a second terrorist attack blew up the headquarters of the Jewish mutual society AMIA, causing 85 deaths and hundreds of injuries.
But as in the case of the embassy, there are no detainees.
The investigations of both cases are still open, although without great progress
With information from Iván Pérez Sarmenti.
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