India: Death toll rises to 28

A pair of bombings tore through crowded public areas in India today, killing 28 people and leaving dozens more wounded.

Security forces have been put on alert across the southern city of Hyderabad, where the blasts happened.

The blasts – one in a park during a laser show, and one in a crowded market area – went off minutes apart, officials said.

“This is a terrorist act,” Rajasekhara Reddy, the chief minister for Andhra Pradesh state, where Hyderabad is located, told reporters, urging people to remain calm.

Jana Reddy, the state home minister, said 28 people had been killed.

He said most of those killed were in the city’s Kothi market, with the rest killed in the laser show in Lumbini park.

Television footage taken in the arena where the show was held showed large pools of blood and dead bodies lying between rows of seats punctured by shrapnel.

Police officers with flashlights and sniffer dogs were searching under chairs looking for more explosive devices.

In May, a bomb at a historic Hyderabad mosque killed 11 people. Another five people died in clashes that erupted after that blast between security forces and Muslim protesters angered by what they said was a lack of police protection.

A series of terrorist bombings have ripped across India in the past two years. In July 2006, bombs in seven Mumbai commuter trains killed more than 200 people. The bombings have been blamed on Pakistan-based Muslim militants.