By Manish Chand, IANS,
New York : As the news of a blast in south Delhi trickled in here, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Saturday expressed “shock and grief” at this apparent terrorist incident and asked senior officials travelling with him to monitor the situation.
“The prime minister has expressed his shock and grief. Officials are monitoring the situation,” a senior official of the Prime Minister’s Office told reporters here.
National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan, who is among the senior officials accompanying the prime minister on his trip to the US and France, is in touch with senior officials and the home ministry in New Delhi.
A 13-year-old boy was killed and 17 people were injured when a low-intensity bomb went off in Mehrauli in south Delhi Saturday afternoon.
The blast, the second to hit the national capital in two weeks, came a day after Manmohan Singh rallied world leaders “to strengthen international cooperation to combat terrorism and to bring the perpetrators, organisers, financers and sponsors of terrorism to justice”.
“We should conclude expeditiously the Comprehensive Convention on Terrorism,” the prime minister underlined against the backdrop of a spate of terrorist attacks in Indian cities and the surging militancy and suicide bombings in India’s neighbourhood.
Terrorism also figured dominantly in Manmohan Singh’s talks with Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari on the sidelined of the UNGA three days ago.