163 KILLED IN INDIAN TRAIN BLASTS

by Salil Panchal and Paul Peachey

July 11, 2006

MUMBAI (AFP) - Seven explosions ripped through commuter trains and stations during evening rush hour in India's financial capital Mumbai, killing at least 163 people in an attack the prime minister blamed on terrorists.

Train cars packed with commuters were blown apart, and television images showed ghastly footage of bloodied limbs and dead bodies in the wreckage after one of the worst such attacks in India in recent years.

Police said at least 163 were killed and 464 injured in the attacks in Mumbai, a sprawling city of almost 18 million people and the capital of the state of Maharashtra.

Suspicion immediately fell on Islamists who have been fighting Indian rule in the disputed Kashmir, part of which is held by Pakistan, where eight tourists were earlier killed 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 A.N. Roy. Neighbouring Pakistan condemned what it called a "despicable act of terrorism."

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called 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 in 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 packed railway stations or on trains in the Matunga, Khar, Mahim, Jogeshwari, Borivali and Bhayendar localities in and around Mumbai, he said. A seventh hit a subway.

The explosions took place within about 20 minutes of each other on Mumbai's packed trains that take several millions to and from work every day.

"The blast was so powerful that we thought we were hit by lightning. It shook our market," said shopkeeper Gopi Chand, who witnessed the blast in Khar.

Television footage showed dazed commuters with blood dripping from gaping injuries being carried by fellow travellers to waiting ambulances near Mahim station. Others frantically tried to call their relatives on mobile telephones.

One young man sat in a metro station with blood streaming down his face. Another young man buried his face weeping into a white handkerchief. People who were unhurt scrambled off trains and streamed down the tracks to safety.

"People began jumping off our running train when a bomb went off and filled the carriage with smoke and fire," said a commuter with serious injuries to his left arm and shoulder.

The injured were helped out of the mangled compartments, many of which were turned into piles of twisted metal.

Shoes, handbags, clothes and other items littered tracks. Bodies were sprawled on the tracks and being carried in sheets away from the trains.

Firemen scoured the wreckage of a train hit in Matunga rail station. Police said the blasts had occurred on first-class carriages of the commuter trains.

Ambulances and taxis ferried the injured to the city's hard-pressed hospitals amid reports of some shortages of blood and medicine.

One doctor, Supriya Kulkarni, told AFP: "We've got all kinds of traumatic injuries, some lost limbs. We've amputated some (limbs) and people have lost a lot of blood."

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 1,000.

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.