Assailants targeted Israeli diplomats in India and Georgia in near-simultaneous strikes Monday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed on archenemy Iran and its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah. Iran denied responsibility for the attacks.
The bombs, which wounded four people, threatened to ratchet up already high tensions between Iran, which has been accused of developing a nuclear weapons program, and Israel, which says such a program would be an existential threat to the Jewish state.
The violence came as recent comments by Israeli officials have raised concerns Israel might be preparing an imminent strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. U.S. and other Western countries have been pressing Israel to give sanctions more time.
Tehran already has accused Israel of covert attacks on its nuclear program, including assassinations of top nuclear officials and scientists.
Monday's attacks appeared to have been carried out with sticky bombs attached to cars by magnets. Similar weapons were used against Iran's nuclear scientists, feeding suspicions that the new bombings were a retaliation crafted to mirror those attacks.
"Today we witnessed two attempts of terrorism against innocent civilians," Netanyahu told lawmakers from his Likud Party. "Iran is behind these attacks and it is the largest terror exporter in the world."
In India, an assailant on a motorcycle apparently attached a bomb to an Israeli diplomat's vehicle and it quickly exploded, officials said. Israel said an attempted car bombing in Tbilisi, Georgia, was thwarted. Netanyahu also said Israel had thwarted attacks in recent months in Azerbaijan and Thailand and unspecified other countries.
"In all those cases, the elements behind these attacks were Iran and its protege, Hezbollah," he said, vowing to "act with a strong hand against international terror."
Iranian officials rejected Netanyahu's accusation as unfounded.
"This accusation is within the Zionist regime's psychological war against Iran," the official IRNA news agency quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast as saying.
"The Zionist regime, due to repeated crimes against humanity, is the main party accused of terrorist activities," he said, according to IRNA.
Both Hezbollah and Iran have deep grievances against the Jewish state.
Hezbollah battled Israel in a monthlong war in 2006, and on Sunday, the Lebanese guerrilla group marked the anniversary of the 2008 assassination of one of its commanders, Imad Mughniyeh, in a bombing widely believed to have been carried out by Israel. Iran suspects Israeli involvement in attacks on its nuclear program.
The New Delhi attack took place just a few hundred yards (meters) from the prime minister's residence as the diplomat's wife was heading to the American Embassy School to pick up her children, said Delhi Police Commissioner B.K. Gupta.
When the car approached a crossing, she noticed a motorcyclist ride up and stick something on it that appeared to be a magnetic device, he said.
The car drove a short distance, there was a loud sound and then an explosion and the car caught fire, he said.
"It was a loud explosion. We realized it's not a firecracker, but an explosion, and rushed toward the car," said Ravi Singh, owner of a nearby gas station.
"The blast was so powerful, the car behind got damaged as well," said Monu, a high school student who uses only one name.
The blast left a charred minivan with blue diplomatic plates, its rear door apparently blown out.
The Israeli Defense Ministry said the woman, Tal Yehoshua-Koren, suffered moderate shrapnel wounds and was being treated at a hospital by Israeli doctors. It identified her as the wife of a Defense Ministry official based in New Delhi.
Her driver, Manoj Sharma, 42, and two people in a nearby car had minor injuries, Gupta said.
Israeli diplomats in India have been on constant alert since Pakistan-based militants rampaged across the Indian city of Mumbai in 2008, attacking luxury hotels, the main train station and killing six people in the Chabad Jewish community center.
India's foreign minister, S.M. Krishna, said India would cooperate closely with Israel in the investigation and promised to bring the assailants to justice.
"I have just spoken to the Israeli foreign minister," he said. "I assured him that the law of the land will take its course."
Authorities in the former Soviet republic of Georgia said an explosive device was planted on the car of a driver for the Israeli Embassy.
Shota Utiashvili, spokesman for the Georgian Interior Ministry, said the driver noticed a package attached to his car's undercarriage and called police.
Police found a grenade in the package and it was defused, Utiashvili said.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton condemned the attacks.
"The United States places a high priority on the safety and security of diplomatic personnel around the world and we stand ready to assist with any investigation of these cowardly actions," she said.
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