Cops looking at Lebanese students recently arrived

Further,India has agreed to Israels request to send its own team of forensics experts to examine the car,its debris and explosive remnants. Just like in the Mumbai case,sources said,the Israeli side was keen to ensure that all leads from the spot are properly examined. There is an understanding that a proper recce had been carried out and so Israel wants to check whether anyone on its list of suspects entered India recently.

Besides this,Israeli inputs from Georgia have still not ruled out the possibility of renegade elements from the anti-Iran terrorist group,Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK),switching sides and using their signature modus operandi to conduct these attacks.

As the investigation makes slow progress,Delhi today carefully steered clear of naming any group or national of any particular country as suspects in the case.

Home Minister P Chidambaram said the incident,in which three other people also sustained injuries,was certainly a terror attack targeted against a diplomat of a friendly country.

We condemn the incident and at this moment I am not pointing a finger at any particular group or any particular organisation but whoever did it,we condemn it in the strongest terms, Chidambaram told reporters in his first remarks on Mondays incident.

It is quite clear that a very well-trained person has committed this attack. There is reason to believe that the target was the Israeli diplomats wife and,therefore,one has to proceed on the basis that it was a terrorist attack, he said.

Incidentally,the attack came within a week of India visit of Tamir Pardo,head of Israels intelligence agency Mossad. Pardo was in New Delhi in the first week of this month and was hosted by Indias external intelligence agency RAW. Sources said he held talks with the RAW chief and the National Security Advisor on security matters.

We have friendly relations with Israel like we have friendly relations with every country. Diplomats of every country are entitled to live and work here in peace and security and any attempt to attack any diplomat and members of diplomats family is condemnable, Chidambaram said.

Within hours of the incident on Monday,Israel had publicly blamed Iran and its proxy Hezbollah for the attack. But echoing Chidambaram,Home Secretary R K Singh also said that the investigations had not reached a stage where the involvement of any group could be suspected.

We have no evidence to name any country at this stage. Its premature to talk about the involvement of any group or country, Singh said.

New Delhi shares a delicate relationship with both Israel and Iran,though those two countries are sworn enemies of each other.

The Home Minister said he was being regularly briefed by the Delhi Police on the investigation and it appeared that a person on a two-wheeler had tailed the embassy vehicle and managed to stick the bombing device at a traffic junction when the ill-fated vehicle had stopped. The biker had sped away immediately after that.

The explosion,according to the eyewitness Gopal Krishnan,happened within seconds. We think it happened within four to five seconds of the device being attached, he said,adding that the scans of CCTV cameras located in the region had not revealed a clear image of the bike.

Chidambaram said National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon and Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai had spoken to the Israeli ambassador Alon Ushpiz in India while Foreign Minister S M Krishna had talked to his Israeli counterpart. New Delhi had assured Israel that the investigations would be taken to its logical end.

Menon is learnt to have asked the Foreign Ministry to collate inputs from Thailand,which was struck by three bomb explosions today,and Georgia where the attempted attack on Israeli interests was foiled on Monday.

The Israeli embassy has asked its officials to be cautious – and reiterated many of the instructions given after the Mumbai terror attacks in 2008.