Mumbai on red alert

Seven blasts rocked suburban trains in Mumbai on Tuesday evening, Police Commissioner A N Roy has announced. Police control has reported 63 passengers have been killed in the blasts, and 400 injured.

The railway police, however, have said there were four blasts on along the Western Railway, while the state police said there were five blasts.

Reports of bomb blasts have come in from between Mahim-Matunga in north-central Mumbai, Khar, Jogeshwari (both in north-west Mumbai), Borivali (north Mumbai) and Mira Road (in Mumbai north, in Thane district), at a time when the suburban commuter traffic was its heaviest. The first blast was said to have taken place at 6.25 pm at Khar.

Rediff.com's Syed Firdaus Ashraf, who was at Mahim railway station soon after reports of the blast came in, said he could see one train compartment was completely blown up in the explosion, and people were carrying bodies away. Commuters said an explosion went off in the men's first class compartment on a Western Railway local, which left Churgate station in South Mumbai at 1754, as it was leaving Mahim station on track 3 at around 1820 hours.

A file brigade official who came on the scene later said he believes that more than 25 injured were removed from the bombed out compartment.

Advocate Chandrakant Dalvi, who was travelling to his home in Dahisar by this compartment, was sitting on the tracks in a daze when rediff.com's reporters met him. He said he could not hear anything in his left ear. He had already got in touch with his relatives to say he was safe, but he had not told them that he was on the train. The fire brigade personnel were sending him to the nearest hospital for a check-up. He said he would take a cab and go home.

Around the tracks seat-cushioning material was lying around, among chappals and shoes and bags. Luggage removed from the compartment was lying on the other side.

Outside the station the road had been cordoned off and two fire engines were posted. But onlookers could view the wreckage from the footbridge and the road.

Two local trains were halted on either side of the bombed train and there was a rush of people leaving the station who were hitching rides home with lorries and tempos.

TV channel CNN-IBN was reporting that atleast 15 people were killed in the Matunga/Mahim blast.

The Western Railway has suspended its suburban services soon after the blasts. Local telephone lines were jammed as panic-stricken commuters called their near and dear ones to alert them of the blasts. Commuters said there was no sign of the police even 30 minutes after the blasts.

A PTI reporter at Santa Cruz station said a blast rocked a Borivali-bound local at 1824 hours, and seven to eight injured commuters jumped out of the speeding train in panic. Around 12 to 15 people who were injured were taken to the nearby V N Desai hospital and the entire first class bogey had been emptied.