…As Peru coach plunges off Pan-American Highway killing dozens***

Israel’s prime minister on Wednesday said that his country’s intelligence services passed along information that helped thwart an alleged terror plot targeting an Australian passenger plane last year.

It would appear to be the first time that Israel has acknowledged a role in uncovering what investigators said was an ISIS-directed plot, which reportedly involved a plan to get a homemade bomb onto an Etihad Airways plane traveling out of Sydney, which was first revealed by Australian authorities last July.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations on February 21, 2018 in Jerusalem. Abir Sultan / EPA

“Israel’s intelligence services prevented an Australian plane from being shot down. This would also have caused a huge malfunction in global air traffic, and this is just one of dozens of attacks that we have thwarted around the world,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in Jerusalem on Wednesday.

“And I think we should praise the Israeli intelligence, which protects not only Israeli citizens, but also many citizens around the world,” Netanyahu said.

Netanyahu did not give further details but The Times of Israel and other local media said the foiled plot was the attempted bombing of the Etihad Airways plane in Sydney.

In late July, Australian authorities said that an Australian man sent his unsuspecting brother to Sydney airport to catch an Etihad Airways flight on July 15 carrying a home-made bomb disguised as a meat grinder built at the direction of a senior ISIS commander, Reuters reported.

The bomb never made it on the plane or even the screening area, Australian Federal Police Deputy Commissioner National Security Michael Phelan said at the time. At the time he called it “one of the most sophisticated plots that has ever been attempted on Australian soil.”

In the meantime, a coach travelling along the Pan-American Highway in Peru has plunged off the road, killing at least 35 people, local police say.

The accident happened at 01:30 local time (06:30 GMT) near the Ocoña bridge in Peru’s southern Arequipa province.

Local media said the coach had fallen from a height that was variously described to be between 80m (260ft) and 200m (650ft).

Last month, 52 people died when another coach fell down a cliff in Peru.

Arequipa newspaper Diario El Pueblo tweeted a picture of the coach lying on its side by the bank of the river Ocoña.

In Wednesday’s incident, the coach, which belongs to the Rey Latino company, was taking passengers from the town of Chala to the city of Arequipa.

A passenger list suggests at least 45 people had signed up for the journey but police say the number of dead and injured suggests more passengers had boarded the coach along the way.

The cause of the accident is not yet known.

Peru’s President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski expressed his condolences to the relatives of those killed in a tweet [in Spanish].

He wrote that all the relevant measures were being taken to help with the rescue and transfer to hospital of the victims.

It comes seven weeks after another deadly accident on the Pan-American Highway north of the capital, Lima.

In that case, a lorry driver clipped the coach, causing the latter to veer off the road and down a steep cliff.

NBC with additional report from BBC