July 14, 2011

MUMBAI BLASTS: INDIAN CITIES ON HIGH ALERT

Posted by The Himalayan Voice:
[India's Home Minister P Chidambaram has said he believes the blasts were "a co-ordinated attack by terrorists", as the explosions occurred within minutes of one another. But he said it was too early to speculate on who might have been behind the attack. "All groups that have capacity to carry out such terror attacks are suspect. All angles will be investigated, all leads will be followed," he told reporters.]

Indian cities are on a state of high alert after three blasts shook the financial capital Mumbai (Bombay), killing 18 people and injuring dozens. 


Indian PM Manmohan Singh has appealed to the people of Mumbai "to remain calm and show a united face". No group has said it carried out the attacks, which took place in three districts during the evening rush hour. The attacks are the deadliest in India since 2008, when gunmen killed 165 people in a three-day raid in Mumbai.


Pakistani-based militants were blamed for the November 2008 attacks and peace efforts were derailed. The government in Islamabad was quick to condemn the latest bombings. The United Nations also condemned the attack, describing it as "heinous".

'All leads followed'

India's Home Minister P Chidambaram has said he believes the blasts were "a co-ordinated attack by terrorists", as the explosions occurred within minutes of one another. But he said it was too early to speculate on who might have been behind the attack. "All groups that have capacity to carry out such terror attacks are suspect. All angles will be investigated, all leads will be followed," he told reporters.

Mr Chidambaram said no intelligence had been received about a coming attack, and suggested that those responsible had "worked in a very clandestine manner - maybe a very small group that has not communicated with each other".

All three bombs were reported within a 15-minute period, starting at around 1850 local time (1320 GMT). The biggest explosion occurred at the Opera House business district in the south of the city, in an area known as a hub for diamond traders.

One witness said he had tried to help by getting the wounded onto motorbikes to take them to hospital. "We came outside, and the area was filled with black smoke. There were bodies lying all over the street, there was lots of blood... We saw many bodies missing arms and missing legs," Aagam Doshi told Reuters news agency.

Another blast, described by the authorities as low intensity, hit the Zaveri Bazaar, also in the city's south, while a third hit the Dadar district in the city centre, known for its gold market. Mr Chidambaram said none of the bombs had been triggered remotely. Federal commando, forensic and investigation teams have arrived in Mumbai to help the local police.

It is hoped security cameras at the gold market and jewellery shops where the two biggest blasts occurred will aid the investigation.

The capital, Delhi, Calcutta and several other cities have been put on alert, with a police presence being stepped up at public places like malls, cinemas, parks and transport terminals.

Schools open

On Thursday, the government revised the death toll from the blasts down from 21 to 17, and said 131 people had been injured. But rescue workers also found a severed head at one of the blast sites which had not yet been identified or included in casualty figures, Mr Chidambaram said.

Most of Mumbai, however, began to return to normal life as dawn broke on Thursday, with vendors making their usual rounds and schools kept open despite the attack. Mumbai has been targeted many times in recent years.

The 2008 attacks, which targeted two high-end hotels, a busy train station, a Jewish centre and other sites frequented by foreigners, were blamed on the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group.

The gunmen, nine of whom died in the raid, killed 165 people. Peace talks between Pakistan and India were broken off after the attacks and have only recently resumed. In a statement swiftly issued on Wednesday, Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani expressed their "deepest sympathies to the Indian leadership".

 

INVESTIGATORS SEARCH FOR LEADS IN DEADLY MUMBAI EXPLOSIONS

[A senior American law enforcement official said that early indications pointed to India-based militants, not to Lashkar-e-Taiba, a militant group in Pakistan. But the official cautioned that the investigation was still in its very early stages and that it was premature to make any firm conclusions about what group carried out the bombings. The police described the bombs as improvised explosive devices.]

By  And 
NEW DELHI — Investigators combed rain-soaked blast sites and scoured security videos on Thursday for clues to who carried out a rapid series of three bombings that killed 17 people and injured 131 in the commercial capital of Mumbai during Wednesday’s rush hour, officials said.
No group has claimed responsibility for the blasts and at a news conference in Mumbai, India’s top security official, Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram, refused to speculate about which terror group might have carried out the attacks.
“We are not pointing a finger at this stage,” Mr. Chidambaram said. “We have to look at every possible hostile group.”
He said that there had been no intelligence warning that an attack on Mumbai was coming in the days before the explosions.
“Whoever has perpetrated this attack has worked in a very, very clandestine manner,” he said.
Ammonium nitrate had been used in the bombs, according to R.K. Singh, the home secretary, and the early evidence pointed to a timer rather than a remote trigger. The closely coordinated explosions took place within several minutes of one another in heavily trafficked areas of the city on Wednesday evening.
“They were not crude bombs but sophisticated devices,” Mr. Singh told reporters in New Delhi. “Only somebody who has training can assemble those devices.”
The attacks were the first in Mumbai since 10 gunmen from Pakistan laid siege to the city in 2008, killing more than 160 people.
A senior American law enforcement official said that early indications pointed to India-based militants, not to Lashkar-e-Taiba, a militant group in Pakistan. But the official cautioned that the investigation was still in its very early stages and that it was premature to make any firm conclusions about what group carried out the bombings. The police described the bombs as improvised explosive devices.
Determining whether the attacks were carried out by a domestic group, such as the Indian Mujahideen, or a foreign outfit, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group that is suspected of the November 2008 assault on Mumbai, is essential to sorting through what the likely impact will be, analysts said.
India and Pakistan have only recently begun holding formal talks that had been suspended in the aftermath of the 2008 attack, gingerly discussing thorny issues such as the status of the disputed region of Kashmir. Pakistan’s foreign minister is scheduled to visit India later this month, and so far there have been no indications that the visit would be scuttled as a result of the Mumbai bomb blasts.
The deteriorating relationship between the United States and Pakistan in the aftermath of the killing of Osama bin Laden, as well as the death of Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai who controlled southern Afghanistan, have made an already complicated regional atmosphere even more volatile.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, the U.S. secretary of state, is also expected to visit India next week to discuss regional security and other issues with senior government officials.
Analysts praised Indian officials for their handling of the explosions, saying that the response was far more swift, calm and controlled then the reaction to the attacks in 2008. In the earlier attack, neither the federal home minister who is responsible for domestic security nor the state chief minister stepped up to inform the public regularly. Both the home minister and chief minister were appointed to their positions after the 2008 attacks.
“The home minister himself flew in immediately,” said Neelam Deo, a former Indian diplomat who is now the director of a Mumbai-based think tank, Gateway House. “The chief minister reacted to calm the situation. The government is operating according to a procedure and is doing better. It’s not like last time when really nobody knew what was going on.”
Ms. Deo said it was unclear whether foreign groups were involved in the planning of the attacks but said their proximity to the assassination of Ahmed Wali Karzai raises question about the timing of the explosions.
“I am not sure that it’s a plot hatched with foreign connections,” she said. “What I think might be more the case that these guys had an agenda with some sort of timing in mind.”
Mr. Chidambaram denied that there had been an intelligence failure, but the government is facing tough criticism as many wonder why, despite spending millions to beef up its counterterrorism capabilities, the attack went undetected.
L. K. Advani, a senior leader of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, told reporters in there that the attacks demonstrated “not a failure of intelligence but a failure of policy,” on the part of the Congress Party led government.
Lydia Polgreen reported from New Delhi, and Vikas Bajaj from Mumbai.