A week before the July 2008 bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul, Polish intelligence had given a tipoff about a possible Taliban strike on the Indian mission, the leaked US military documents indicate.
The documents, titled “The War Logs”, also say that Pakistan’s ISI has set up a semi-autonomous ‘S-wing’ to run operations against India and Afghanistan and an ISI official is in charge of running suicide attacks in Kabul.
“Taliban are planning to carry out an attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul. TB (Taliban) designated an engineer ... to take this action,” said WikiLeaks, the online whistleblower, quoting the Polish intelligence warning almost seven days before the attack.
The documents said the attack on the Indian embassy led the CIA’s then deputy director Stephen R. Kappes to immediately go to Islamabad to confront the ISI with evidence that it had helped organise the attack. But the leaks gave no clue whether the Indians were tipped off about the impending attack.
A suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden car into the heavily fortified Indian embassy gates in Kabul on July 7, 2008, killing 58 people and wounding more than 140.
Defence attache Brig. R.D. Mehta and counsellor Venkateswara Rao were among those killed in the attack. —PTI