Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh visits Indian consulate in Herat

KABUL: Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh today flew to Afghanistan's Herat province and reviewed the security situation for the Indian consulate there which was attacked last week.

Singh flew to Herat in the morning and met Governor Syed Fazullah Wahedi, Indian Ambassador to Afghanistan Amar Sinha and other senior officials to take stock of the situation during her brief visit which lasted a few hours.

The Foreign Secretary met the brave staff including the ITBP security personnel who repelled the attack on May 23 in which all the four terrorists were killed, officials said.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has already said that as per information given to his government by a Western intelligence agency, the perpetrators of the Herat attack belonged to the Lashkar-e-Toiba.

Situated in north western part of Afghanistan, Herat is over 800 km from capital Kabul.

After the attack, security at the Indian Embassy in Kabul and consulates in Jalalabad, Mazar-e-Sharif and Khandhar besides Herat has been beefed up and a high alert sounded to all Indian assets based across Afghanistan.

India is carrying out various development projects in Herat province including construction of Salma hydroelectric and irrigation dam project at the cost about $200 million.