An Iranian man whose legs were blown off during an alleged botched bomb plot last year against Israeli diplomats in Bangkok said Friday he found the explosives and was trying to dispose of them safely when they detonated.

Saeid Moradi, 29, told a Bangkok court that he was about to leave Thailand when he found four bombs hidden inside radios in a cupboard at a rented house in the city.

Seven people were killed, dozens injured and many homes destroyed when a powerful earthquake struck eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday, officials said.

The quake, measured at a magnitude of 5.6 by the U.S. Geological Survey, sent people rushing from their homes in worst-hit areas and was felt in the Afghan capital Kabul and in Islamabad in neighboring Pakistan.

Iran's Finance Minister Shamseddin Hosseini said Tuesday that international sanctions had pushed inflation above 30% and was causing "a lot of trouble" but that Iran's nuclear drive would not be halted.

Lashing out at measures by the United Nations, United States and European Union, Hosseini said the Iranian economy was increasingly gearing up to produce at home the goods that it cannot import.

Iran rejected as "ridiculous" on Tuesday a claim by Ottawa that two foreigners arrested in connection with a plot to derail a passenger train in the Toronto area were backed by Tehran-supported al-Qaida.

"This is the most hilarious thing I've heard in my 64 years," Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi was quoted by the ISNA news agency as saying, adding that any suggestion that al-Qaida is linked to Iran "is truly ridiculous."

Iran on Saturday dismissed concerns raised by five nuclear-armed states over Tehran's controversial atomic program, saying the Islamic republic is committed to the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

"Iran is a committed member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (and) will continue its cooperation" with the U.N. atomic watchdog, Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said in remarks reported by the ISNA news agency.

A meeting was held recently between Secretary-General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Central News Agency reported on Saturday.

According to the news agency, Nasrallah held talks with senior Iranian officials during his visit to Tehran, where he met with Khamenei.

A 5.2-magnitude earthquake hit northwestern Iran on Thursday, only days after a deadly temblor struck near the border with Pakistan, media reported citing the seismological center at Tehran University.

There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage in the latest quake which struck at 3:09 pm (1039 GMT), at a depth of eight kilometers (around five miles), in the town of Tassouj.

Iran's army "alone" is able to destroy Israel, army commander General Ataollah Salehi said on Thursday, responding to boasts by the Jewish state that its military that could attack its archfoe on its own.

"Our message to this illegitimate regime (Israel) is the same, we do not need to utilize all of Iran's military forces," Salehi said on the sidelines of the Islamic republic's annual Army Day. "The army ... alone is able to destroy Israel."

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon has warned Lebanon that it would “pay the price” of any attack carried out by Hizbullah on the Jewish state.

Hizbullah and Hamas are armed with tens of thousands of rockets of different types and on the day they receive the order, “they’ll fire them at our cities and civilians,” Ya'alon said during an Independence Day speech he delivered in Herzliya on Tuesday.

A huge earthquake that struck Iran's rural southeast region killed one woman and injured more than two dozen other people, media reports Wednesday cited officials as saying.

"A woman was killed by a mountain landslide following the quake," Alireza Shahraki, governor of Khash city, was quoted by ISNA news agency as saying.