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NEW DELHI: Indian authorities said on Sunday that a deadly car blast in New Delhi earlier this week was an attack carried out by a “suicide bomber,” announcing the arrest of an accomplice.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA), the country’s counter-terrorism law enforcement body, said the alleged attacker and the second suspect were both from Indian-administered Kashmir, where police have carried out sweeping raids in recent days.
Announcing “a breakthrough” in the investigation, the NIA said in a statement it had arrested Amir Rashid Ali, “in whose name the car involved in the attack was registered.”
He had “conspired with the alleged suicide bomber, Umar Un Nabi, to unleash the terror attack,” it added, without specifying any possible motive.
Nabi, a resident of Kashmir, was an assistant professor in general medicine at a university in the northern state of Haryana, according to the counter-terrorism agency, which said it had seized a vehicle belonging to him.
Ali had come to Delhi to “facilitate the purchase of the car which was eventually used as a vehicle-borne Improvised Explosive Device (IED) to trigger the blast,” the NIA said.
The explosion on Monday took place near a busy metro station close to the landmark Red Fort in the capital’s Old Delhi quarter, where the prime minister delivers the annual Independence Day address.
A hospital official has said the blast killed 12 people. It was unclear whether the toll included Nabi.
The NIA’s statement said the attack “claimed 10 innocent lives and left 32 others injured.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has called the attack a “conspiracy,” and his government vowed to bring the “perpetrators, their collaborators and their sponsors” to justice.
It was the most significant security incident since April 22, when 26 mainly Hindu civilians were killed at the tourist site of Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir, triggering clashes with Pakistan.
Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947, and both claim the Himalayan territory in full. Tensions remain high between New Delhi and Islamabad.
On Friday, nine people were killed when confiscated explosives blew up at a police station in Indian-administered Kashmir, in what authorities said was an accident.
Local media reported that a militant organization had claimed responsibility for it, which police dismissed.
The explosives had been recovered from Haryana state just before the powerful car blast in Delhi, according to the police.
Indian media have widely connected the Delhi blast with a string of arrests just hours prior.
Police said those arrested were linked with Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), a Pakistan-based and Al-Qaeda-linked group, as well as a Kashmiri offshoot linked to it.
The group that claimed the police station blast is considered close to JeM.