Thaindian News

Tel Aviv, Feb 14 (IANS) The wife of an Israeli diplomat who Monday survived a terror attack in New Delhi said she is fortunate her children were not in the car that was bombed. The attack prompted Israeli diplomats across the world to use taxis or public transport to commute.

Tal Yehoshua Koren, who worked in the Israeli embassy in New Delhi but was not a diplomat, was going to the American Embassy School to fetch her children in a Toyota Innova car when her vehicle was bombed Monday. Three more people, including her driver and two others in another car, were injured.

Koren, wife of Israel’s defence attache, told Israeli media that she remembers “seeing the motorcyclist who apparently threw something in the direction of the car”.

She spoke from her hospital bed in Delhi to the Hebrew newspaper Yediot Acharonot.

Koren, who was wounded in the attack, said she is fortunate that her children were not with her in the vehicle when it was bombed.

She may have saved her life by dashing out of her vehicle when she saw the motorcyclist attaching the device to her car, israelnationalnews.com reported.

Seconds later, there was a deafening blast and the car burst into flames.

The attack rattled the Israeli embassy personnel.

“It is scary,” admitted an Israeli diplomat at its embassy in New Delhi.

“Life for Israeli diplomats in India isn’t easy,” haaretz.com quoted an employee as saying.

“You are always surrounded by police officers and security guards. It is difficult but we’ve been maintaining a kind of normal life, but what had been will be no more, especially in relation to the day-to-day life of diplomats’ families.”

Israeli diplomats in India admitted that the terror could have been much worse if Koren’s children happened to have been in the car at the time of the blast, the media report said.

A diplomat in the Israeli embassy in India said: “We were always warned, and even more so recently, that we’re a target.”

“But you don’t really understand it until it happens. We will continue working and doing what needs to be done, but one must admit, given that we have families, children - it is scary,” the diplomat was quoted as saying.

Israeli diplomats across the world were advised to use taxis or public transport after the twin attacks in India and Georgia, and iraeli institutions have been placed on high alert, reported israelnationalnews.com.

Citing a report on Channel 10, it said that Israel’s security agencies, including Mossad, have directed all Israeli diplomats not to use their own or embassy vehicles until these can be inspected.

Officials were being sent home by taxi out of fear that their vehicles may be booby-trapped, the report said.