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Sunday, August 26, 2007

Terror Attacks Kill 43 in India

Two bombs exploded Saturday night in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad resulting in
43 dead and approximately 80 wounded and that was just from the bombs that actually exploded and they have found 19 additional bombs that did not explode.

Saturday's explosions went off minutes apart. Television footage showed seats blown to pieces and victims lying in the debris at one bombing at an open-air laser show in Lumbini Park, a popular leisure spot. The show, a new attraction in Hyderabad, covers the city's history.

No suspects have been named over the bombings, altough in the past suspicion has fallen on Hindu extremists and Islamic groups linked to Pakistan and Bangladesh.



No big surprise there. Extremists only goal is to kill as many innocent civilians as they can.

There is also a history of terror attacks in this area:

Hyderabad, where Muslims make up about 40 per cent of the population, has a history of religious violence.

Saturday's explosions came three months after 11 people were killed in a bombing at the city's 17th century Mecca Mosque. Police still have not named suspects for that attack.

The attacks led to a heightened alert across India, where 300 people have been killed in bombings within the past 13 months.

In July last year a series of co-ordinated blasts along the commuter rail network in Mumbai killed about 200 people, an attack blamed on Kashmiri separatists with suspected links to Pakistan. Two months later at least 30 people died in a bombing near a mosque in the city of Malegaon, central India.

And in February more than 60 passengers were killed in the firebombing of a train travelling between India and Pakistan.



On Sunday, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh pointed to Islamist militant groups in neighbouring Pakistan and Bangladesh.

“As things stand today the available information points to that,” Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy told a news conference when asked if militants from Bangladesh or Pakistan were involved.

A federal home ministry official said about 22 people were being questioned. Separately, police reported one man had been detained near Hyderabad on suspicion of selling bicycle ball-bearings that were used as pellets in the bombs.


The word on the street is that it was not done by locals but by outsiders:

“The blasts were not done by local people,” taxi driver G.R. Vidya Dhar said.

“This is definitely being done from outside with an intention to make us fight each other. Let us wait and see.”



Hyderabad has recently become a symbol of India's economic boom, an increasingly cosmopolitan center and hub of software and call-center jobs. The city has a thriving Muslim quarter and is renowned as a center of Islamic culture.


(NOTE: Instead of leaving you with the advertisements I usually have at the bottom of each post, I will leave you with one of the videos from Freedoms Watch) [30 second video.]

Wounded Veteran:



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