Reprisal strikes feared after train blasts kill scores of people, injure hundreds more
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
DAN McDOUGALL AND SONYA FATAH
Special to The Globe and Mail, with a report from Umarah Jamali in New Delhi
NEW DELHI and TORONTO — India is bracing for reprisal attacks today after a string of bomb blasts struck at seven spots along Mumbai’s commuter rail line, killing more than 190 people, injuring hundreds more and raising fears of sectarian violence.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called yesterday’s attack “evil” and “cowardly,” but also appealed for peace between Muslims and Hindus as suspicion fell on Muslim extremists.
“I urge the people to remain calm,” he said, “not to believe rumours and carry on their activity normally.”
Indians, however, were preparing for the worst.
“I have closed down my shop early today,” said one Muslim shopkeeper near an area of Mumbai where militant Hindus are active. “I think I shall not open my shop for [the] next few days. . . . If Muslims did this, they are doing it wrong. They are acting against the teachings of Islam. Islam is against any violence against innocent people.”
No group had taken responsibility yesterday for the bombings, which killed at least 190 people and injured more than 600.
Police officials said last night that they had no idea who masterminded the attacks. although many senior officers quickly pointed the finger of suspicion at Muslim militant groups fighting to wrest the predominantly Muslim and disputed Kashmir region from India.
Indian officials blamed one such group for a bombing attack at a New Delhi market last October that killed more than 60 people.
One analyst suggested that the recent improvement in India’s relations with the United States, culminating most recently in an agreement to share nuclear technology, could have given militants extra impetus to carry out yesterday’s attack.
“Anybody seen to be part of the U.S. camp automatically becomes a target of Muslim extremists,” said Ashok Mehta, an independent security analyst based in New Delhi. “You could see many more attacks in India.”
Yesterday’s bombs struck mostly passengers in the first-class carriages of the busy Western Railway and were timed for when the trains were at their busiest, shuttling workers home from work in India’s financial capital, formerly known as Bombay and the embodiment of India’s rush to modernize.
There were conflicting reports on the exact timing, but the explosions began shortly after 6 p.m., and struck in rapid succession at seven sites, with two bombs at one location.
It was unclear last night whether the blasts were the work of suicide bombers, as was the case in the London transit attack that killed 52 people just more than a year ago, or planted explosives, as with the Madrid train strikes that killed 191 people in March of 2004.
Gruesome scenes from yesterday’s attacks dominated Indian television, which began referring to the day as 7/11. Images of a middle-aged man, his body severed in two, crying for help as his fellow passengers carried him away, were broadcast repeatedly. Shoes, handbags, clothes and other items littered the railway tracks. Body parts were strewn everywhere. Some of the victims were said to have jumped from exploding rail cars, only to be struck by other trains.
Survivors last night told of massive explosions and scenes of devastation.
“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 survivor said, standing outside a local police station in a blood-soaked shirt. “There were no police or railway people to help and we had to carry the victims onto the street and into rickshaws and cars to get them to hospital.”
Things were no less chaotic at the hospitals, where the dead lay in hallways covered in white sheets on blood-soaked floors as medical workers scrambled to attend to the streams of wounded.
The massive rescue effort required to bring the dead and injured to nearby hospitals was hampered by heavy monsoon rains, a shortage of ambulances and the lack of a co-ordinated emergency response system.
In response to the attacks, authorities put Mumbai and the capital New Delhi on high alert and beefed up security across the country. Police set up checkpoints in bazaars and public places across the country’s major cities, and increased patrols in sensitive areas in an effort to ward off potential clashes in areas with large Muslim populations.
The Mumbai blasts came hours after seven people, including six Indian tourists, were killed by suspected Islamist militants in a series of grenade attacks in Srinagar, the capital city of the disputed territory of Kashmir over which India and Pakistan have fought three wars.
India has accused Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf of being too soft in his war against terrorism, and says Pakistan is not doing enough to rein in terrorists infiltrating India through the Kashmiri border to carry out attacks. Both Gen. Musharraf and Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, however, were quick to condemn the attack. “This despicable act of terrorism has resulted in the loss of a large number of precious lives,” a spokeswoman for Pakistan’s foreign office said.
Terrorist attacks are not new to Mumbai. During the last decade there have been a series of strikes against the public. In March of 1993, 13 bombs went off, one of them in the city’s stock exchange. More than 250 people died and thousands were injured. Authorities pinned those attacks on the city’s underworld of organized crime. Crime boss Dawood Ibrahim has been a fugitive since. Indian authorities say he is hiding in Pakistan.
In an effort to maintain calm across the city, authorities called on people to resume their daily lives. Schools would be open as usual. And although a handful of long-distance trains scheduled for departure from Mumbai yesterday were cancelled, the targeted railway had resumed all its suburban services by midnight.
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