Deaths as bombs rock Indian capital

Al Jazeera reports below on the brutal attacks in India.

India, readers will recall, has the largest Muslim population of any nation but is home to a Hindu majority.

India is a secular nation but internal religious tensions have been rising in recent years.

Readers will also remember that Pakistan, India and Bangladesh were once one state under the Raj and the strife following partition was dreadful (well, that's an oversimplification ignoring the partition on Bengal (which was somewhat distinct) but that's too much history for a simple point which is the region has religious issues that have caused nations to break apart in living memory).



Deaths as bombs rock Indian capital


A group calling itself the Indian Mujahedeen has claimed responsibility for a series of bomb blasts that have rocked India's capital, New Delhi, leaving up to 20 people dead and 40 injured.
Six explosions hit five separate areas in New Delhi's bustling business district within minutes of each other on Saturday, injuring weekend shoppers.

Police also found an additional two bombs which they successfully defused, Al Jazeera's corresondent reported.

Bloodstained clothes, badly damaged cars with shattered windows and mangled motorbikes littered the areas where the explosions took place.

Television broadcasts showed a scene of chaos, with wounded people being carried away by civilians and emergency service workers.

Shakeel Ahmad, Delhi's home minister, told Al Jazeera "the number of casualites may go a little higher, because the number of people admitted to different hospitals is still not known".
The so-called Indian Mujahedeen group, which also said it was responsible for a string of five bomb attacks in July in the western commercial city of Ahmedabad that killed at least 45 people, made the claim in an email to India's NDTV, the Press Trust of India said.

NDTV quoted the email as saying: "In the name of Allah, the Indian Mujahedeen has struck back again."

Little is known about the group who also threw down a challenge to India's security agencies in the email, saying "do whatever you want and stop us if you can".

Full story here: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2008/09/200891314524580165.html