New Delhi: Four heavily armed terrorists who attacked the Indian Consulate in Herat in Afghanistan on Friday were possibly planning to take staffers as hostage as forces recovered large number of weapons and a packet of dry fruits from them.
This chilling revelation was made by Afghan president Hamid Karzai during his meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Although no terror group has yet claimed credit, Karzai is on record saying that the LeT, headed by Hafiz Saeed, was responsible for the Herat attack.
"According to information given to us by a key western intelligence agency, the perpetrators of the Herat attack belong to the LeT," he said.
Asked which agency Karzai was referring to, Abdali said, "We can't take the name, but we can say it's a leading western agency."
The Director General of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP), Subhas Goswami, which guards the Herat consulate along with other missions in Afghanistan, said that the terrorists were no doubt lethally armed as we made some recoveries from the one terrorist who was killed by our troops right in the consulate perimeter.
The DG said they recovered one AK-47, an Under Barrel Grenade Launcher (UBGL), six caches of live magazines (one magazine can hold about 30 bullets), four hand grenades, 17 live Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG) rounds and a packet containing dry fruits from the killed terrorist.
Officials, studying the attack, said the recovery of such heavy weaponry coupled with dry fruits indicates the attackers were planning to escalate the situation by taking “hostages” from those in the mission staff.
