42 killed in India bomb blasts

Foreign-based Islamic extremists are believed to be responsible for two bombings that tore through a restaurant and a park in Hyderabad, southern India, killing at least 42 people, an Indian official said today.

The attacks yesterday were the latest in a series of bombings to hit India in the last year, and nearly all have been blamed on Islamic extremists with foreign connections – even when Muslims were targeted.

“Available information points to the involvement of terrorist organisations based in Bangladesh and Pakistan,” Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh state, where Hyderabad is located, said after an emergency state Cabinet meeting.

Reddy did not name any groups, but Indian media reports, quoting unnamed security officials, identified the Bangladesh-based Harkatul Jihad Al-Islami organisation.

Reddy declined to provide more details. “It is not possible to divulge all this information,” he said.

Harkatul, which is banned in Bangladesh, wants to establish strict Islamic rule in the Muslim-majority nation governed by secular laws.

Bangladesh’s Foreign Ministry said Dhaka had not been informed of the allegations.

A spate of other bombings in India have been blamed on Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, or Army of the Pure, one of more than a dozen Islamic insurgent groups fighting to oust India from Muslim-majority Kashmir. Pakistan has denied charges of training and supporting the militants.

Kashmir is divided between predominantly Hindu India and mostly Muslim Pakistan, with both claiming it in its entirety. The rebels want Kashmir’s independence or merger with Pakistan.

Hyderabad has a history of Hindu-Muslim violence, and Reddy praised residents for their restraint in the wake of the latest attacks.

Both the restaurant and the park were popular with Hindus and Muslims.

The restaurant was destroyed by the bomb placed at the entrance, and most of the deaths reportedly occurred in the blast.

The other blast struck a laser show at an auditorium in Lumbini park, leaving pools of blood and dead bodies between rows of seats punctured by shrapnel.

By this morning, the death toll had risen to 42 as victims succumbed to injuries sustained in the attacks, said Reddy. Some 50 people were wounded in the two blasts.

Two other bombs were defused in the city yesterday, one under a footbridge in the busy Bilsukh Nagar commercial area, and another in a cinema in the Narayanguba neighbourhood, a police official said.