Jaipur, INDIA (Reuters)
An unknown Islamist group said on Thursday it set off coordinated blasts that tore through a packed shopping area in a popular Indian tourist city this week, but police say they were still verifying the claim.
Eight bombs, many strapped to bicycles, killed 61 people and injured 216 people in the western city of Jaipur on Tuesday.
An email to local media, from a group calling itself the Indian Mujahideen, declared open war on India and threatened attacks on tourists. No foreign tourists are believed to have died and the attack took place in the low season.
"From the tourism point of view, this attack is to warn the entire crusaders of the world, U.S. and Britain in particular, we Muslims are one across the globe and you won't find it easy in India as well," the email, obtained by Reuters, said.
"Don't send your people to India and if you do so then you people will be welcomed by our suicide attackers," it said. "This letter is an open warning to India that stop supporting U.S. in the international arena."
A senior police officer cast doubt on the email's authenticity.
"We came across similar claims in the past and later found they were actually pranks made by somebody," K.P. Raghuvanshi, the former chief of Mumbai's anti-terrorism squad who is still a top police officer in the city, told Reuters.
"We have no information about a group called Indian Mujahideen and I doubt its authenticity now."
Police later said they had traced that email to a cybercafe in the town of Sahibabad, just outside the capital New Delhi, and taken the owner and his son in for questioning.
Police also said the attack bore some hallmarks of the Bangladeshi militant group Harkat-ul-Jihad al Islami (HuJI), and released a sketch of a man in his mid-20s seen near the scene of one bombing speaking Bengali, the main language of Bangladesh.
In Jaipur, dozens of Bangladeshi migrant laborers were taken in for questioning. HuJI was blamed for blasts in Uttar Pradesh and Hyderabad last year that killed scores of people.
In the past few years, bomb blasts in Indian cities have killed hundreds of people. The deadliest was in July 2006, when seven bombs on Mumbai's rail network killed more than 180 people.
Islamist militant groups in Pakistan and Bangladesh intent on fanning hatred between Muslims and Hindus in India, and damaging a fragile peace process between New Delhi and Islamabad, are often blamed for bomb attacks in India. |
