The Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) has stepped vigil at
the Indian diplomatic missions in Afghanistan where it has been deployed
following the terrorist attack on Herat consulate early Friday morning.
Senior ITBP officials said a high alert has already been
sounded at the Indian Embassy in Kabul and consulates in Jalalabad, Mazar-e-Sharif,
Kandahar and Herat.
All the four terrorists, who targeted the facility in Herat,
were killed. Officials said one of the terrorists was killed by ITBP personnel
while the others were neutralised by Afghan forces.
All Indian diplomatic staff is safe, they said. The ITBP,
which renders perimeter security and access control duties at Indian
installations besides being also trained to undertake special rescue and VIP
security duties, had deployed an additional 79 commandos in Afghanistan in the past
six months in addition to the 219 commandos already deployed there.
Twenty-three personnel were deployed at the Herat facility.
The force had deployed more personnel after analysing the
security situation in the country and the need for enhancing security at Indian
installations.
A senior security official said a decision to increase the
deployment was taken last year following the August 3 suicide bomb attack near
the main consulate complex in Jalalabad, which killed 12 civilians. Sources
said there was no weakness in the intelligence-sharing mechanism.
A security analysis done in the recent past showed that the
Indian assets in Afghanistan were facing threats from not only al- Qaeda and
the Pakistan-based Haqqani network, but also from smaller militant groups based
in Pakistan.
Security officials are not discounting the possibility of
terror networks trying to send a signal to India at a time that a new
government under Narendra Modi is being sworn in.
Source: http://www.deccanherald.com/content/409193/itbp-steps-up-vigil-afghan.html
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