A year on, India mourns Kabul mission victims

NEW DELHI - India Tuesday recalled the sacrifices of the 41 people, including two of its diplomats, killed in a suicide bombing outside its embassy in Kabul a year ago and underlined its commitment to bring the perpetrators of the attack to justice.

“We recall their sacrifice with a sense of grief as also to reiterate our commitment against terrorism and all those who sponsor and sustain it, External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna said in a statement in parliament on the first anniversary of the attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul.

“Our thoughts are also with all the families who lost their loved ones, he said.

“No words of condemnation are too strong for the perpetrators and organisers of this attack. They must and will face a reckoning. Justice must be served, Krishna stressed.

A condolence meeting was held by officials of the external affairs ministry in the memory of two of its diplomats killed in the July 7, 2008 attack, the first attack on an Indian mission abroad that also claimed the lives of many Afghan nationals.

Please join me in a moment’s silence to recall their sacrifice, to honour their memory, and to reiterate our commitment to fight terrorism and all those who sponsor and sustain it,” Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon said at the condolence meeting.

Defence Attache R.D. Mehta and Counsellor Venkateswara Rao were among the 41 killed in a suicide car bomb attack on the Indian mission in Kabul last year by suspected Taliban militants. Afghanistan and India blamed the attack on Pakistan’s spy agency Inter- Services Intelligence (ISI).

Pakistan denied any involvement in the attack that many in India saw as a message to intimidate New Delhi from carrying out its multi-faceted reconstruction work in Afghanistan.