Five warnings from the Central Intelligence Agency of the U.S. helped authorities defeat the May 23 >strike on the Indian consulate in Herat, Afghanistan, intelligence sources have told The Hindu.

The last operational input from the CIA was delivered to India’s intelligence services two hours after the assault began at 3.15 a.m. Kabul time, the sources said, and identified the assault team as operatives of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba. Indian diplomatic sources said the CIA’s warnings on the attack began to flow in six weeks before the attacks, and led Indo-Tibetan Border Police guards at the consulate to be placed on high alert. The guards were able to shoot dead a terrorist who attempted to scale the mission’s perimeter defences, while others were killed by the Afghan security forces nearby.

Kabul had earlier blamed the Pakistan-based terrorist group for the attack, believed to have been designed to take hostages ahead of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s visit to New Delhi for the swearing-in of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.