The wife of the Israeli Defence Attache in New Delhi, her Indian driver and two bystanders on the road were injured on February 13, 2012, when what was believed to be an explosive-cum-incendiary device attached to the rear of her car as it stopped or slowed down near a petrol service station about a km from the Israeli Embassy exploded. The scene of the blast is located in a high-security area where the tightly-guarded house of the Indian Prime Minister is located. The car—a sports utility vehicle—was engulfed in flames, but did not explode into pieces, thereby indicating that the incendiary effect was more than the explosive effect.
Access control in front of the Israeli Embassy is generally very tight. It would, therefore, be very difficult for a terrorist to approach the vicinity of the Embassy and plant a bomb on a vehicle or otherwise cause an explosion. The wife of the Defence Attache is also a diplomatic member of the staff of the Israeli Embassy. She was reportedly going to the American School to pick up their children when the explosion took place.
The police believe, on the basis of eye-witness accounts, that a motor-cycle borne terrorist neared the car as it stopped or slowed down, attached the improvised explosive device (IED) to the rear of the car and sped away before the explosion took place. The indications till now are that only one terrorist was involved.
“¦a motor-cycle borne terrorist neared the car as it stopped or slowed down, attached the improvised explosive device (IED) to the rear of the car and sped away before the explosion took place
Since the blast took place almost instantaneously after the terrorist attached the IED to the rear of the vehicle, the IED would appear to have been triggered off by an instantaneous timer or a mobile phone.
The car did not enjoy any protection. Nor was there any Israeli security guard inside the car. Since the driver was an Indian, it is unlikely that he was an Israeli security guard.In view of the tight security outside the Israeli Embassy, it would have been difficult for the terrorist to have waited on his motor-cycle outside the Embassy and then followed the car.He must have waited at a point where he could not be observed by the Israeli security personnel posted outside the Embassy and neared the rear of the car as it approached the scene where the blast took place.
The incident had not been planned as a mass fatality attack.It was more a targeted attack to kill an Israeli diplomat. It is not clear whether the terrorist knew that the car belonged to the Israeli Defence Attache. Possibly not. It appears to have been a random attack on a car bearing the CD number plate of the Israeli Embassy.
The attack coincided with the fourth anniversary of the assassination of a senior leader of the Hizbollah in Damacus and the first anniversary of the death of two Iranian nuclear scientists in Teheran due to a similar explosion caused by a sticky bomb. Iran had blamed the Israeli intelligence for these incidents and had threatened revenge.A similar explosion due to an IED attached to the car of an employee of the Israeli Embassy in Tibilisi, capital of Georgia, was averted the same day due to the timely detection of the IED and its neutralisation before it could explode.
The attack coincided with the fourth anniversary of the assassination of a senior leader of the Hizbollah in Damacus and the first anniversary of the death of two Iranian nuclear scientists in Teheran due to a similar explosion caused by a sticky bomb.
Israeli leaders and officials have blamed the Iranian intelligence and the Hizbollah for the successful attack in New Delhi and the attempted one in Tiblisi. They have claimed that these two incidents came in the wake of two other thwarted attempts a few days earlier in Bangkok and Buenon Aires. They have threatened reprisals against Iran and the Hizbollah.
The Hizbollah had operated in the 1990s in Bangkok and Buenos Aires and was known to have a local support base in Tibilisi. But it had neither operated in New Delhi in the past nor was it known to have sleeper cells in India.
Unless the terrorist involved is arrested and interrogated, it would be difficult to say whether he had come into India from outside to cause the blast or whether he is an Indian Muslim recruited by the Hizbollah for the attack.
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