India’s prime minister on Tuesday vowed to “defeat the evil designs of terrorists” after blasts killed scores in the country’s financial capital, Mumbai, and eight others in revolt-hit Kashmir.
Manmohan Singh called for calm in Mumbai and Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian Kashmir, after an emergency meeting at his official residence with Home Minister Shivraj Patil.
“We will work to defeat the evil designs of terrorists and will not allow them to succeed,” Singh said in a statement read out by Patil after the meeting. “The government will take all possible measures to maintain law and order and defeat the forces of terrorism.”
Seven explosions ripped through commuter trains during the evening rush hour in India’s financial capital, killing at least 135 people in what police quickly called a terrorist attack.
Train cars were blown apart, and television images showed ghastly footage of bloodied limbs and dead bodies in the wreckage of one of the worst such attacks in India in recent years, with fears the death toll could keep rising.
The Mumbai attacks came after eight tourists were killed and 39 people wounded in a series of grenade attacks earlier on Tuesday targeting holiday areas in the main city of revolt-hit Indian Kashmir.
In the bloodiest of the attacks blamed on Islamic separatist rebels, six tourists — including five women — were killed and 15 people wounded when a grenade blasted a minibus in Srinagar’s main tourist district.
A suspect held after the fifth blast turned out to be one of the militant attackers, senior police officer SM Sahai told reporters.
He identified the militant as Mohammed Afzal from northern Baramulla district and said he had been recruited for the job by one of the Pakistani members of a hard-line Lashkar-e-Toiba group.
Abdullah Gaznavi, a spokesperson for Lashkar condemned the attacks, terming them as “inhuman”.
“Our fight is against Indian troops and none else,” he told reporters over the telephone and denied Afzal was from Lashkar.
India accuses Islamabad of supporting separatists in Kashmir waging a separatist rebellion since 1989 in Kashmir, which has claimed more than 44 000 lives, by official count. Pakistan denies the charge and condemned Tuesday’s attacks.
The two countries have fought two of their three wars since independence in 1947 over the disputed region. — AFP