12jul06
SEVEN explosions ripped through commuter trains during evening rush hour in India's financial capital Mumbai overnight, killing 140 people, in an attack quickly blamed on terrorists.
Train cars packed with commuters were blown apart in one of the worst attacks in India in recent years.😭
AP Sinha, a senior state official for Maharashtra, said 140 people had been killed in Mumbai, a sprawling city of almost 18 million people and the state's capital. Around 250 people were believed to be wounded.
Suspicion immediately fell on Islamists who have been fighting Indian rule in disputed Kashmir, part of which is held by Pakistan, where eight tourists were killed earlier in the day in a series of grenade attacks.
"Obviously a terrorist outfit is behind the blasts because a normal human being could not have done this," said Mumbai police commissioner AN Roy.
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Neighbouring Pakistan called it a "despicable act of terrorism".
Hours after the blasts, ambulances were still delivering the dead and injured to overwhelmed hospitals.
"I've been here for hours taking the bodies inside. Some of them have no eyes, no hands, no arms," said Bunty Jain, a shopkeeper who had joined the throng outside state-run Kem hospital to help.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appealed for calm after an emergency meeting at his official residence.
"We will work to defeat the evil designs of terrorists and will not allow them to succeed," he said. "The government will take all possible measures to maintain law and order and defeat the forces of terrorism."
Indian authorities sounded a high alert across the capital New Delhi, at trains and bus stands across Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, as well as in Kashmir, where an Islamic insurgency has been raging for 16 years.
The apparently coordinated blasts occurred at crowded railway stations or on trains in the Matunga, Khar, Mahim, Jogeshwari, Borivali and Bhayendar localities in and around Mumbai. A seventh hit a subway.
Police said explosives were used in the blasts, which took place within minutes of each other.
"The blast was so powerful that we thought we were hit by lightning. It shook our market," said shopkeeper Gopi Chand, who witnessed the explosion in Khar.
The injured were helped out of the mangled compartments, many of which were turned into piles of twisted metal. Bodies were sprawled on the tracks and being carried in sheets away from the trains.
Mumbai has seen several bombings in the past. It was rocked in 1993 by a series of blasts which killed some 250 people and injured over 1000.
Police have blamed Muslim underground figures or Kashmiri militants for most of the attacks.
The blasts drew swift condemnation from nations around the world including Britain, Russia and the United States, which have suffered attacks on their own soil.
"I condemn utterly these brutal and shameful attacks. There can never be any justification for terrorism," British Prime Minister Tony Blair said.
"We stand united with India, as the world's largest democracy, through our shared values and our shared determination to defeat terrorism in all its forms," he said.
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