Sunday, October 30, 2005
NEW DELHI : At least 50 people were killed on Saturday in serial blasts throughout New Delhi, India's home minister and senior government officials said.
Thirty-seven bodies had been brought into one hospital, federal home minister Shivraj Patil was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India news agency.
Federal health secretary Prasanna Hota said 13 bodies had been brought into three other hospitals in New Delhi. About 70 others, including some foreigners, had been injured in the blasts, PTI said.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh blamed "terrorist elements" for the serial blasts which targeted "innocent citizens".
The explosions ripped through crowded market areas in New Delhi moments apart, as shoppers in the Indian capital were gearing up for a major Hindu holiday. More than 60 people were reported injured by the blasts, which hit the popular Paharganj bazaar area popular with locals and Western budget tourists as well as the Gole and Sarojini Nagar markets.
Police commissioner K.K Paul said detectives were looking at the possibility that the blasts were the work of militants but had no further immediate details about the cause. "We have seen badly-burned bodies littering the market in Sarojini Nagar," a photographer on the scene said, adding that a fierce blaze had engulfed much of the area. "Most of them are children who had set up food stalls."
The blasts occurred in rapid succession early Saturday evening in heavily crowded areas where tens of thousands of shoppers were preparing for Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights that starts Tuesday.
The first blast occurred at 5:40pm (1210 GMT) in an area frequented by budget tourists in Paharganj, a middle-class shopping area near Delhi's main railway station, where seven people died, the news agency said.
Minutes later another explosion occurred at Sarojini Nagar market in south Delhi where nine people died, PTI said. Another explosion occurred in a bus near the industrial area of Okhla, police said. A fourth blast in Gole Market could have been caused by firecrackers, witnesses said. "We received a total of four (blast) calls but one was a hoax," New Delhi fire department spokesman Satya Prakash told AFP. "In the remaining three, our fire trucks are working to bring out people who are injured as well as the bodies," he said. "From the feedback we are getting from our trucks, the situation is grisly."
Ambulances and fire trucks raced back and forth through the city as police reinforcements cordoned off the blast sites, where shops had been torn apart from the force of the explosions, leaving piles of wreckage in the streets. . .
18:26
*kendra :D
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