OMEN
07-11-2006, 09:18 PM
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Carnage ... police and onlookers at the blast scene
SEVEN bombs have exploded on packed commuter trains and at stations in India's financial hub, Mumbai, killing more than 160 people and wounding hundreds more.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blasts that took place within about 10 minutes during evening rush hour.
But suspicion was today expected to centre on Muslim militants fighting New Delhi's rule in disputed Kashmir, who have been blamed for several bomb attacks in India in the past.
Police inspector Ashok Jadhav said this morning: "The death toll is 163 and around 460 people have been injured.
Police Commissioner A.N. Roy commented on speculation that high-powered plastic explosives were used.
"We are not sure if it is RDX or not," he said.
Commuters fled suburban rail stations in panic after the explosions and mobile phone lines were jammed. Hundreds of dazed passengers walked along the railway tracks.
Television reports showed twisted rail carriages and people in torn, blood-stained clothes carrying the dead and wounded on stretchers as steady monsoon rain fell.
A policeman was shown carrying two white, blood-stained bundles of what appeared to be body parts.
"The blasts happened when the trains were most crowded," said D.K Shankaran, chief secretary of the state of Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital.
At peak hours, each nine-car passenger train in Mumbai carries more than 4500 people, about three times the rated capacity.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called for calm and Sonia Gandhi, leader of the ruling Congress party, expressed her grief.
"I urge the people to remain calm, not to believe rumours and carry on their activity normally," Nr Singh said, calling the explosions a "shameful act".
Pakistan, the United States, the European Union, France and Britain all condemned the explosions.
"We condemn thoroughly this terrible terrorist incident," Us Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in Washington.
"We will stand with India in the war on terror. It just shows this kind of hideous incident can happen anywhere in the world against innocent people."
At the city's Sion hospital, relatives were frantically looking for friends and relatives. Scores pored over a board displaying a list of injured.
"I spoke to him 10 minutes before he died," said Haji Mastan, sobbing uncontrollably after being told about the death of his cousin Mukti Darvesh, who was travelling on one of the trains.
"Why did it have to end like this? He was young and he has children."
Some of the people who entered a makeshift morgue were unable to identify badly mutilated bodies.
The blasts occured on five trains and at two stations in Mumbai's suburbs, which are linked to the downtown office and business areas mainly by an overground rail network that is used by some 6.5 million people each day.
Railway authorities suspended suburban train services in the city after the blasts.
Dazed survivors with wounds from injuries to heads, legs and hands waited at railway stations, with little sign of any emergency medical aid.
"We heard a loud blast in one of the train compartments. When we rushed there and looked, we saw people with severed limbs and grievous injuries," one witness told the CNN-IBN news channel, standing in a blood-spattered coach.
"There were no police or railway people to help."
The Mumbai blasts came just hours after suspected Islamist militants killed a number of people in a series of grenade attacks in Indian Kashmir's main city, Srinagar, police said.
Kashmir has been split between India and Pakistan since shortly after the two countries gained independence from Britain in 1947, but both claim it in full.
Pakistan's Foreign Ministry issued a statement today saying that President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz strongly condemned the "terrorist attack" in Mumbai.
Mumbai, a city of about 17 million people formerly known as Bombay, has been hit by other bomb blasts in the past decade.
More than 250 people died in a string of bomb explosions in the city in 1993 for which authorities blamed the city's underworld criminal gangs. Those attacks followed the demolition of a mosque in the Hindu holy city of Ayodhya.
AAP
Carnage ... police and onlookers at the blast scene
SEVEN bombs have exploded on packed commuter trains and at stations in India's financial hub, Mumbai, killing more than 160 people and wounding hundreds more.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blasts that took place within about 10 minutes during evening rush hour.
But suspicion was today expected to centre on Muslim militants fighting New Delhi's rule in disputed Kashmir, who have been blamed for several bomb attacks in India in the past.
Police inspector Ashok Jadhav said this morning: "The death toll is 163 and around 460 people have been injured.
Police Commissioner A.N. Roy commented on speculation that high-powered plastic explosives were used.
"We are not sure if it is RDX or not," he said.
Commuters fled suburban rail stations in panic after the explosions and mobile phone lines were jammed. Hundreds of dazed passengers walked along the railway tracks.
Television reports showed twisted rail carriages and people in torn, blood-stained clothes carrying the dead and wounded on stretchers as steady monsoon rain fell.
A policeman was shown carrying two white, blood-stained bundles of what appeared to be body parts.
"The blasts happened when the trains were most crowded," said D.K Shankaran, chief secretary of the state of Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital.
At peak hours, each nine-car passenger train in Mumbai carries more than 4500 people, about three times the rated capacity.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called for calm and Sonia Gandhi, leader of the ruling Congress party, expressed her grief.
"I urge the people to remain calm, not to believe rumours and carry on their activity normally," Nr Singh said, calling the explosions a "shameful act".
Pakistan, the United States, the European Union, France and Britain all condemned the explosions.
"We condemn thoroughly this terrible terrorist incident," Us Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in Washington.
"We will stand with India in the war on terror. It just shows this kind of hideous incident can happen anywhere in the world against innocent people."
At the city's Sion hospital, relatives were frantically looking for friends and relatives. Scores pored over a board displaying a list of injured.
"I spoke to him 10 minutes before he died," said Haji Mastan, sobbing uncontrollably after being told about the death of his cousin Mukti Darvesh, who was travelling on one of the trains.
"Why did it have to end like this? He was young and he has children."
Some of the people who entered a makeshift morgue were unable to identify badly mutilated bodies.
The blasts occured on five trains and at two stations in Mumbai's suburbs, which are linked to the downtown office and business areas mainly by an overground rail network that is used by some 6.5 million people each day.
Railway authorities suspended suburban train services in the city after the blasts.
Dazed survivors with wounds from injuries to heads, legs and hands waited at railway stations, with little sign of any emergency medical aid.
"We heard a loud blast in one of the train compartments. When we rushed there and looked, we saw people with severed limbs and grievous injuries," one witness told the CNN-IBN news channel, standing in a blood-spattered coach.
"There were no police or railway people to help."
The Mumbai blasts came just hours after suspected Islamist militants killed a number of people in a series of grenade attacks in Indian Kashmir's main city, Srinagar, police said.
Kashmir has been split between India and Pakistan since shortly after the two countries gained independence from Britain in 1947, but both claim it in full.
Pakistan's Foreign Ministry issued a statement today saying that President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz strongly condemned the "terrorist attack" in Mumbai.
Mumbai, a city of about 17 million people formerly known as Bombay, has been hit by other bomb blasts in the past decade.
More than 250 people died in a string of bomb explosions in the city in 1993 for which authorities blamed the city's underworld criminal gangs. Those attacks followed the demolition of a mosque in the Hindu holy city of Ayodhya.
AAP