An Israeli diplomat badly wounded in a bomb blast in New Delhi had shrapnel removed from her spine, doctors said Tuesday, as Israel accused Iran of being the world's "biggest exporter of terror".
In Washington, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned Monday's "cowardly" attacks in both India and Georgia in the "strongest possible terms" but the White House reserved judgment on who was responsible.
Israel said it was in no doubt about whom to blame, after one of its embassy cars exploded in a ball of flames in central New Delhi and police defused a bomb fixed to another embassy vehicle in the Georgian capital Tbilisi.
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"Iran is behind these attacks. It is the biggest exporter of terror in the world," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told members of his right-wing Likud party in Jerusalem.
But Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast rejected the accusations. "Iran condemns all acts of terrorism," he was quoted as saying by Al-Alam television.
Bystanders dragged the 42-year-old Israeli diplomat and her Indian driver from their burning car, after Delhi police said a hitman on a motorbike fixed a suspected magnet bomb to the silver Toyota as it slowed for a junction.
"She has sustained multiple shrapnel injuries. Because of the explosion, sharp metal objects were found in her liver, lungs and spinal cord," Arun Bhanot, a doctor at the Primus Hospital in Delhi, told reporters.
"The major problem was in the spinal cord," he said. "The shrapnel was causing pressure in the nerve. She was having a problem in the left foot but now they (the shrapnel) have all been removed."
Another doctor said she was in a stable condition following surgery.
The diplomat, named as Tal Yehoshua Koren, is also the wife of Israel's defence attache in New Delhi, and was on her way to collect her children from school, officials said.
Indian detectives on Tuesday examined the car after removing it from the scene of the attack.
New Delhi communications lecturer Shashwati Goswami was opposite the car when it blew up.
"All of a sudden there was a boom and I saw that a car was engulfed in fire. I really got a shock," Goswami told AFP.
GEORGIAN ATTACK ATTEMPT
In Tbilisi, an Israeli embassy employee found a bomb on his car and contacted police who were able to defuse the device before it detonated, according to Georgia's interior ministry.
The method used in the attacks resembles the tactics of assassins who have been targeting Iranian nuclear scientists with magnetic bombs placed on their vehicles.
Three scientists and a physicist have been killed in the past two years in murders blamed by Iran on Israeli and US secret services.
The bomb plots in New Delhi and Tbilisi also fell between anniversaries of the deaths of two top militants from Hezbollah, the militant group which has close ties to Iran. The anniversary sparks annual travel warnings from Israel.
Netanyahu said there had been a number of attempts to harm Israelis and Jews in recent months in places such as Thailand and Azerbaijan, in a series of plots he said were coordinated by Iran and Hezbollah.
Israel's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said the latest attacks proved that Israelis both at home and abroad were "a target for terrorists" but that the country knew "how to identify those who are responsible".
India, which is no stranger to militant attacks, ordered security to be tightened at diplomatic missions and Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna voiced regret.
"India very strongly condemns such incidents and it is going to be fully investigated and the culprits will be brought to justice," he said.
The last militant strike in New Delhi was in September when a bomb outside the High Court killed 14 people -- one of a series of blasts that has shaken public confidence in the government's counter-terror capabilities.
