Jaipur, INDIA (AFP)
Indian police on Wednesday arrested two men after eight near-simultaneous bombings killed 63 people and wounded 216 in the Rajasthan tourist city of Jaipur, the state's chief minister said.
Seven women and 10 children were among the dead after the blasts ripped through crowded markets on Tuesday night.
"This seems to have been done by some international group," the state's chief minister Vasundhara Raje said.
Pakistan-based Islamic militants fighting against Indian rule in Kashmir are usually blamed for such attacks.
The serial blasts went off within minutes of each other close to several Hindu temples in what police said was a terror attack on the city 260 kilometers (160 miles) west of the Indian capital.
"It's a terror attack. There was no (intelligence) report of this," said police director general A.S. Gill.
No claims of responsibility were reported.
In Jaipur hospital wards and at the morgue, the dead included Hindus and Muslims, a strong minority in the city, an AFP reporter said.
Muhammad Farid, 29, was heading home from work when the blasts hit.
"I felt like I was hit by lightning and I couldn't really figure out what was happening," the father of five told AFP at the same hospital, a blood-stained bandage around his arm.
Several of the explosions took place along the walled city's Johari bazaar, a strip of shops housed in pink buildings that are the hallmark of Jaipur, known as the pink city.
Jaipur, Rajasthan's capital, is popular with foreign and domestic tourists but there were few in the city in mid-May, the hot season in northern India.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh condemned the blasts and appealed for calm, as the government issued a nationwide security alert.
Cities across India have been bombed repeatedly in recent years and analysts say Islamic extremist groups are attempting to stoke sectarian tensions to derail a peace process with Pakistan and damage India's booming economy. |
