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10-30-2005, 07:32 PM
Kashmiri group claims Delhi blasts

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uklatest/story/0,1271,-5380523,00.html?gusrc=ticker-103704

Sunday October 30, 2005 10:18 PM

A little-known group with ties to Kashmir's most feared militants has said it carried out a series of terrorist bombings that killed 59 people and injured 210 others in New Delhi.

"We have lots of information but it is not proper to disclose it yet," Home Minister Shivraj Patil said. "Our people are making good progress. The investigation is going well."

Security was tightened in New Delhi and across many other states. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh denounced the apparently co-ordinated bombings, describing them as "dastardly acts of terrorism."

"These blasts have been timed to create disaffection during the festival season," he said in a brief television statement. "We shall defeat their nefarious designs and will not allow them to succeed. We are resolute in our commitment to fighting terrorism."

A man saying he represented the militant group Islamic Inquilab Mahaz, or Front for Islamic Uprising, took responsibility for the bombings in a call to the Kashmir News Service in Indian-controlled Kashmir. The little-known group is tied to the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, the most feared militant group in Kashmir, police said.

The caller said the attack "was meant as a rebuff to the claims of Indian security groups" that militant fighters had been wiped out by military crackdowns and the October 8 South Asian earthquake.

The home minister refused to comment on the claim, but a leading anti-terrorism expert said earlier that the timing and nature of the blasts appeared to indicate the work of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba.

Police said they were looking for a man in his 20s who on Saturday night refused to buy a ticket on a bus and got off in the Govindpuri neighbourhood, leaving behind a large black bag.

When some of the 40 passengers raised an alarm, the driver and bus conductor examined it and threw it out just as the blast occurred, injuring them both as well as seven others.

Joint Commissioner of Police Karneil Singh later said no one was under detention, but (that) numerous people were being questioned.

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