Indian intel holds Pakistani elements responsible for Kabul attack

New Delhi, Jul 10 (UNI) India's intelligence and security establishment are holding elements in Pakistan responsible for the Monday attack on the Indian mission in Kabul in which India lost two of its diplomats and an equal number of security guards among the 41 dead.

Sources said they were collating information to ascertain if official elements in Pakistan coordinated the bombing. India strongly believes that suicide car bomb attack on its embassy in Kabul ''came out of Pakistan'' where the ground situation has "worsened" since the change in government.

India, they said, will fine-tune its response to the attack after ascertaining facts from various sources, including Afghan officials who clearly see marks of Pakistan's ISI in the assault on Indian mission in the war-torn country.

Seething with rage over the terror attack in which India, for the first time lost an IFS officer, sources said ''We will not let this go...if any body thinks (he) can get away with this that is nonsense. At the same time, bureaucratic quarters expressed their anger over how people have become numb over terror attacks on Indian targets. ''We accept (such) barbarity....it is pathetic.'' Accusing Pakistan of trying to strike a deal with the local Taliban militants, India said such bargains ''were undermining efforts to defeat terrorists in the war-ravaged country.'' ''Those who perpetrated this act and those who train and protect them and enable them to commit horrific acts of violence are no better than the basest criminals,'' India's United Nations Ambassador Nirupam Sen told the Security Council in a hard hitting address today.

India, he said, would not yield to those who commit these ''barbaric acts'' and to those responsible for ''greater villainy of sheltering and enabling terrorists.'' Significantly, it is for the first time that the Afghan Talibans said they were not responsible for the attack on an Indian target. This, the sources noted, clearly pointed that the attack emanated from Pakistan.

Afghanistan, too, had accused Pakistan of the attack.

''We firmly believe that there is a particular intelligence agency behind it," Afghanistan presidential spokesman Homayun Hamidzada had stated without naming the ISI.

Hamidzada said the attack was "designed outside Afghanistan and it was exported to Afghanistan" with the help of local collaborators.

Even as India formulates its official response to the attack, it has already launched a diplomatic offensive against Pakistan.

It, however, remains to be seen how India takes up the Kabul attack with Pakistan at a time when it feels that ''ground reality has worsened there with the change in government.'' Meanwhile, the Indian Embassy in Kabul will work from two locations in view of significant damage to the building in the car bomb attack. India is also constructing a new building for its mission. It will be far more secure and would be ready in next 18 months.

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