Muslim militants blamed for Bombay bombings

Hindus and Muslims alike mourned today for victims of the worst terrorist attack in a decade in India’s financial heart of Bombay, as the death toll from the twin car bombings rose to 46, with 150 people injured.

Investigators of yesterday’s attack focused their probe on Muslim militants, including groups that Hindu-majority India claims are backed by Muslim Pakistan - sparking fears of renewed tensions just when relations between the nuclear-armed neighbours appeared on the mend.

But police said they had no direct evidence of the perpetrators and no group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, which killed members from both sides of India’s Hindu-Muslim divide. Pakistan condemned the carnage as “wanton targeting of civilians”.

Terrorist attacks in the past have triggered severe tit-for-tat sectarian violence, and Muslims in Bombay worried that they would be blamed by Hindus for the attack.

“There is a fear gripping the city,” Muslim community leader and businessman Sohail Rokadia said. Overnight, roads in several parts of the city – usually clogged with traffic – were deserted.

The bombs in two taxis exploded minutes apart, ripping through a crowded neighbourhood of jewellery markets and a colonial-era tourist attraction, and shattering window panes in this city of 16 million people. Several people were being interrogated, including one taxi driver.

The timing raised concerns the blasts were linked to a dispute over a religious site in the northern city of Ayodhya claimed by both Hindus and Muslims that has been the source of much bloodshed in the past. The bombings came hours after the release of a long-awaited archaeological report on the site that itself showed divisions over the site’s history.

Many Bombay residents said the explosions appeared aimed at boosting tensions between India’s two largest religious groups, and recalled the horror of the last large-scale attack in the city – serial bombings in March 1993 that killed more than 250 people.

Police Commissioner Ranjit Sharma said investigators were focusing on the Students Islamic Movement of India, or SIMI, a militant Muslim students’ group outlawed in 2001, and Lashkar-e-Tayyaba. The latter is one of more than a dozen Islamic rebel groups fighting Indian security forces in Kashmir since 1989, seeking independence for the Himalayan province or its merger with Muslim-dominated Pakistan.

“There are many jihadi groups out, let loose by the enemy country,” Sharma said in a reference to Pakistan. New Delhi accuses Islamabad of aiding the militants, an allegation Islamabad denies.

The two neighbours – which have gone to war three times since independence from Britain, twice over Kashmir – have made recent moves toward reconciliation, including reinstating diplomats in each others’ capitals and restoring bus links.

Police said there was no direct evidence linking any group, or Pakistan, to the bombings.

The United Nations, China and the United States joined Pakistan in condemning the attacks.

“Acts of terror are intended to sow fear and chaos among free peoples,” US president George Bush said in a statement. “I hope that the perpetrators of these murders will be identified quickly and brought to justice.”

In hospitals, desperate mourners pleaded with clerks to speed up paperwork to enable them to receive the bodies of their kin – several dismembered by the blasts.

The attacks seemed aimed more at the city itself than any particular ethnic group.

One explosion ripped through the city’s gold and jewellery trading hub, where many shops are owned by Hindus but where many artisans are Muslims. The other took place at the Gateway of India arch, a landmark built by British colonisers to mark a royal visit. The massive arch is a popular lunchtime spot for both Muslims and Hindus.

Women wailed as the body of 19-year-old tourist guide Krishna Thakur, wrapped in a white shroud and marigold flowers, was taken away for cremation. Mourners included the residents of “The Anchorage,” an orphanage where Thakur frequently visited.

A few miles away at a Muslim burial ground, mourner prayed as the bodies of Sadique Ahmad, 42, and his nephew, Mohammed Sohail Latif Wadiwala, 21, were lowered into separate graves.

“Even after the blasts, both Hindus and Muslims were together in the rescue,” Rokadia, the Muslim leader, said before the ceremony. “If the aim was to create a distance between the two communities, the perpetrators have failed.”