Attack identical to way in which Iranian n-scientists were hit

“In all those cases,the elements behind these attacks were Iran and its protege Hezbollah,” Netanyahu told his Likud party members in Jerusalem,referring to the two planned attacks today and similar but foiled attempts to attack the Israeli interests in Thailand and Azerbaijan last month.

“This is a terror attack against Israel and its diplomats. At this point we are not discussing how it happened but you have already seen the statement made by Netanyahu. Israel’s proxy Hezbollah has been carrying out attacks against Israeli interests,” said David Goldferb,a spokesperson at the Israeli embassy in New Delhi.

If the Israeli claim is established to be true,this would be the first time that Hezbollah,an anti-Israel Shia militant group operating mainly out of Lebanon,has got directly or indirectly involved in any terrorist attack on Indian soil. Investigators said it was too early to ascertain the level of Hezbollah’s involvement,if at all.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility. But,as The New York Times said,if the Israeli accusations are verified they would represent Iran’s first confirmed retaliation for a series of recent attacks in Iran aimed at killing Iranian atomic scientists and sabotaging Iran’s disputed nuclear programme,the source of rising tensions between Iran and the West. Iran has said publicly it would avenge those attacks.

At least five scientists with connections to Iran’s disputed nuclear programme have been killed under mysterious circumstances since 2007,the most recent last month.

In a widely discussed article in The NYT Magazine last month,analyst and author Ronen Bergman suggested that Israel and its intelligence agency Mossad was behind the attacks. He mentioned several incidents of targeted assassination,at least a couple of which are eerily similar to the manner in which the Israeli diplomat’s car was attacked today.

Bergman’s article mentioned the assassinations of Majid Shahriari and Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan,both senior figures in the Iranian nuclear establishment,who were killed after motorcyclists attached ‘limpet mines’ or ‘magnet bombs’ to their cars and sped away. A third scientist,Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani,was targeted similarly,but he escaped.

It is not clear yet,but the attack on the diplomat’s car in Delhi is also believed to have been a result of a limpet mine attached by two motorcyclists following the car.