Saturday's blasts are the latest in a long line of attacks targeting Indian cities [AFP]

A little-known group calling itself the Indian Mujahidin has claimed responsibility for Saturday's attack.

Jaynarayan Vyas, a state government spokesman, said on Sunday that 161 people were wounded when at least 16 bombs went off in several crowded neighbourhoods of Ahmedabad.

Cities around the country have been put on alert and security has been stepped up at markets, hospitals, airports and train stations.

"The entire nation, including major metro cities in India, have been put on high alert and they have been asked to step up security in vital installations," a home ministry spokesman said.

In New Delhi, police used loudspeakers and distributed leaflets in crowded market places, warning people to watch out for unclaimed baggage and suspicious objects. Police guarded Hindu temples in the eastern city of Kolkata.

'Terror of death'

An email sent to several television stations just minutes before the attacks in Ahmedabad said: "In the name of Allah the Indian Mujahidin strike again! Do whatever you can, within 5 minutes from now, feel the terror of death!"

The subject of the email read: "Await 5 minutes for the revenge of Gujarat", an apparent reference to riots in the western state in 2002 which left at least 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, dead.

Shakeel Ahmed, India's minister of state for home affairs and spokesperson for the Congress party, said: "We have heard of the Indian Mujahidin in an earlier blast but nobody confirmed whether this organisation exists or if it's a cover up for any other organisation which is creating trouble in India."

The group has previously claimed to have carried out bomb attacks which killed 63 people  in the western city of Jaipur in May

Saturday's attack followed a series of blasts in the southern IT hub of Banglaore the previous day, which killed at least two people, but the email warning did not claim responsibility for those bombings.

Another unexploded bomb was found and defused early on Sunday, OP Mathur, the city's police commissioner, said.

He said police had detained 30 people in their investigation.

Multiple blasts

Most of the blasts took place in the narrow lanes of the older part of Ahmedabad, which is tightly packed with homes and small businesses.

Police said that the first explosion was reported at around 6pm local time (12:30 GMT) on a bridge which saw bloody clashes between Hindus and Muslims in 2002.

Many of the bombs were placed in busy areas of the city, including a railway station and a diamond market. Some devices were attached to bicycles, while one appeared to have been detonated on a bus.

Some devices were attached to bicycles in different parts of Ahmedabad [AFP]

A second wave of explosions went off outside hospitals shortly after the first series of blasts.

Officials and medical staff said that many of the injured had been hit by flying nuts, bolts and ball bearings packed into the bombs.

Sriprakash Jaiswal, a junior home minister, was critical that the attacks had come despite security being heightened after the Bangalore blasts.

"This is very unfortunate and we are surprised that despite a high security alert sounded yesterday after the bomb attacks in Bangalore, the blasts occurred today in Ahmedabad. We are shocked," he told reporters in New Delhi.
 
"It seems there is a lack of co-ordination between [federal] intelligence agencies and people involved in the policing."

Manmohan Singh, the Indian prime minister, condemned the attack and urged Ahmedabad residents to remain calm, his office in New Delhi said.

Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat state, said: "The land of Mahatma Gandhi has been bloodied by terrorists whom we shall not spare."

Suspicions

India's home ministry said that it suspected "a small militant group" was behind the attacks in Bangalore.

"Special squads have been formed to find out who is behind the blasts. We have not got any conclusive leads yet," MR Pujar, Bangalore's additional commissioner of police, said on Saturday.

Muslim groups in Pakistan and Bangladesh have been blamed for previous attacks in India.

The attack was the second to hit a BJP-ruled state within 48 hours [AFP]

Ajai Sahni, a security analyst from India's Institute of Conflict Management, said: "This seems to be within a very long established battle and we have been seeing such blasts in intervals of a few weeks to three months, almost regularly for the past three to four years, somewhere or other in the country."

"One or a combination of a small group of terrorist organisations is in all probability involved in these blasts as well," he said.

"Controlling interests are the same. However, the executing groups may or may not be the same, but the overall umbrella of organisations who are the handlers are basically the same group of Pakistan-based groups backed by the inter-service intelligence of Pakistan.

"All past major incidents that we have seen have pointed to control on Pakistani soil and there is no reason to believe that they are not connected through one single objective," Sahni said.

Recommend this article...

Did you enjoy this article? Please bookmark it onto: