According to people familiar with the developments, India’s central counterterrorism agencies have drawn up a list of suspects with their inquiries concluding that the Iranian Quds force was behind the terror attack but that the bomb was planted by a local Indian Shia module, a month after an improvised explosive device (IED) went off outside the Israeli embassy in Delhi in late January.
Deliberate false-flag cyber markers were left by the perpetrators, pointing to the role of the Islamic State, but the counterterror agencies are clear that the blast was part of the asymmetric warfare campaign being carried out by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps against Israel, they added. “That the bomb was not of high intensity, with no human targets in mind was perhaps because the Iranians did not want to run afoul of a friendly nation like India. But the message was clear and the threat is real,” said a counterterror expert who asked not to be identified and who is now keeping an eye on the Iranian connection and the people associated with it.
A low-intensity device exploded outside the Israel embassy on January 29. Counterterrorism agencies found that the explosive device used was not crude as it appeared to be. Instead, it was a remote-controlled device triggered off by a bomber using line of sight. While the results of the nature of the explosive are still awaited from forensic labs, the agencies feel the device was either an ammonium nitrate-fuel oil explosive with an electric detonator or a more sophisticated PETN (pentaerythritol tetranitrate) device. What they could confirm was that the device contained ammonium powder and had ball bearings, which shattered the windows of three cars parked nearby.
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