India, Israel cooperate on bomb investigation

Indian FM says all information uncovered about Dehli attack on Israeli embassy car is passed to Israel and vice versa.

By YAAKOV KATZ, HERB KEINON
Netanyahu, India FM SM Krishna (photo credit: Reuters)
Netanyahu, India FM SM Krishna
(photo credit: Reuters)
Israeli forensic teams arrived in New Delhi on Tuesday to assist in the investigation of the bombing attack against an Israeli embassy car a day earlier, as India’s foreign minister said his country would cooperate fully with Jerusalem.
“Whatever information we get, we pass it on to the Israeli authorities, and whatever information they have, which could possibly be of assistance to us in the context of the investigations, I am sure they will share it with us,” Foreign Minister SM Krishna said in a television interview with India’s CNN-IBN.
“We are in touch with the Israeli foreign minister,” he said. “Any kind of cooperation that Israel wants, we will be happy to help.”
Indian media outlets said Israel provided the Indian authorities with information on two suspects in the attack connected with Iran.
Israel’s envoy to India, Alon Ushpiz, told the Indian news program Headlines Today that Israel had “no doubt” Iran was behind the attack.
“We are grateful for the level of cooperation that we have gotten from [India’s] intelligence agency,” he said.
Ushpiz said the Indian leadership assured Jerusalem that those who planned the attack “will be dealt with swiftly and promptly.” He added that it was “mind boggling” that Iran carried out the attack in the heart of India.
Tali Yehoshua-Koren, the wife of the Defense Ministry’s representative to India who was injured in the bombing as she drove to pick up her children from school, was in stable condition after surgery.
Defense officials said that shrapnel was removed from near her spine and that the doctors would decide Wednesday whether she could be flown back to Israel to continue her treatment. She is suffering from partial paralysis in one of her legs.
India’s Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram told reporters in New Delhi that a “very well-trained person” carried out the bombing on Monday. The explosive device was attached to Yehoshua-Koren’s car by a motorcyclist as her car stopped at a red light. The attacker has not yet been apprehended.
Chidambaram confirmed that the incident was a “terror attack.”
Indian media said that CCTV street cameras showed a man in a brown jacket following the Israeli embassy car on a red motorcycle. According to these reports, the license plate number was unreadable.
The Israeli delegation sent to New Delhi included top Israel police bomb sappers and, according to Indian media reports, representatives from the Mossad who were interfacing with their Indian counterparts investigating the bombing.
Speaking in Singapore, where he is attending the annual air show, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that Iran and Hezbollah were determined to strike at Israelis throughout the world.
“They want to kill Israelis and we will have to act against this terror front and continue to prepare for the other challenges we are facing,” Barak said.
Meanwhile, Israel opened its embassy in New Delhi on Tuesday, although it operated at a somewhat limited capacity. Operations in the Israeli embassies in Tbilisi, the site of another attack on diplomatic personnel on Monday, as well as Bangkok, and a number of other unspecified sites around the globe were also scaled down a bit on Tuesday.