An explosion was reported near the Israeli Embassy in New Delhi on Tuesday evening (New Delhi time), Israel’s Foreign Ministry announced.
“There were no casualties as a result of the explosion,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lior Haiat told reporters.
“The circumstances of the incident are under investigation by the local authorities in full cooperation with the Israeli security forces,” he added.
The incident comes as India’s Navy announces that it plans to deploy three warships and reconnaissance aircraft in the Arabia Sea. The plan, intended to “maintain a deterrent presence,” follows a string of recent attacks on commercial shipping vessels.
This past Saturday, an attack on commercial shipping was again carried out off the coast of India. The MV Chem Pluto, a chemical/oil products vessel, was hit by a combat drone believed to have been fired directly from Iran.
An Iranian kamikaze drone also struck the Israeli-owned ‘Mayet’ cargo ship last month as it sailed in the northeast portion of the Indian Ocean. The attack caused minor damage to the vessel but no injuries were reported. The Singapore-based Eastern Pacific Shipping (EPS) company that owns the vessel is controlled by Israeli billionaire Idan Ofer.
In January 2021, an explosive device was detonated outside the Israeli Embassy in New Delhi. Several weeks later, India’s counterterrorism agencies concluded that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force was behind the plot, but that the device had been planted by a local Indian Shia sect.
A letter addressed to Israeli ambassador Ron Malka was found at the site of the explosion, accusing the ambassador of being a terrorist and a devil representing a terrorist nation. The writer also vowed revenge for Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani and Quds Force official Abu Mehdi Al Muhandis (both of whom were assassinated by the US in drone attack in Baghdad in January 2020) as well as for Iranian nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was killed in his car in November 2020.
In July 2012, IRGC terrorists attached a bomb to a car belonging to Tal Yehoshua Koren, the wife of the Israeli defense attaché to India, while she was on her way to pick up her children from school. Koren was moderately wounded in the blast and required surgery to remove shrapnel from her body. Her driver and two bystanders suffered minor injuries in the attack.
