More than 45 people were killed and around 140 injured yesterday when two massive car bombs ripped into the heart of Bombay, India’s financial capital, in a devastating attack likely to plunge relations between India and Pakistan into fresh turmoil.
One bomb planted in a taxi went off outside the Gateway of India – the city’s most famous tourist attraction – killing at least 10 people and wounding dozens of others standing nearby.
Another had exploded minutes earlier in a crowded jewellery market, also in the south of the city, causing a huge number of casualties. There was no immediate claim of responsibility last night — but suspicion is likely to fall on Islamist extremists, possibly taking revenge for last year’s communal riots in the neighbouring state of Gujarat, where 2 000 Muslims died.
The blasts follow a recent thaw in relations between Pakistan and India, which has accused Islamabad of supporting Islamist militants who have carried out previous attacks on Indian soil.
Last night India’s Hindu nationalist prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, held an emergency cabinet meeting as police put the Indian capital, New Delhi, and Gujarat’s riot-hit main city, Ahmedabad, on a state of high alert.
Analysts warned that the blasts would damage already-strained relations between India’s majority Hindu community and the country’s 140-million Muslims.
The first blast took place shortly after 1pm local time in the Zaveri bazaar, Bombay’s packed gold and diamond market which had just opened. The bomb was hidden inside a taxi.
It sent debris flying across a huge area, ripping into shops. More than 30 people were killed in the explosion.
The second blast along Bombay’s crowded seafront took place four minutes later, shattering windows in the five-star Taj Mahal Hotel 200 metres away, which is used by the city’s wealthy elite and by Bollywood film stars. The taxi which contained the bomb had been dumped in a public car park. The blast left paving stones drenched with blood and littered with abandoned shoes.
The hotel’s communications manager, Ravi Dubey, said no guests or foreign tourists had been hurt.”This was a terrorist attack. It was too organised to be anything else,” he said. ”They decided to strike at an elite area.”
Ingrid Alva, a public relations consultant who works near the Gateway, said: ”The building we were in shook and we heard a loud noise. I rushed out and saw the crowds at the Gateway of India. We saw some body parts lying around, before we were told to move away by the police.”
As hospitals struggled to cope with the wounded, police rounded up suspects, including a taxi driver.
Last night police claimed they had also discovered a large amount of explosive concealed near a railway tunnel on the outskirts of Bombay. Around 100 detonators had been hidden along a busy commuter line at Igatpuri.
The bombings bear a grim resemblance to a wave of explosions that shook Bombay in 1993, killing 250 people. Those blasts were blamed on groups avenging Muslim deaths in Hindu-Muslim riots after the razing of a mosque at Ayodhya in northern India.
Yesterday India’s chief archaeological body released a report that claimed a temple had existed at the disputed religious site long before the mosque. It was not clear last night whether the report and the Bombay blasts were linked. – Guardian Unlimited Â