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Download PDF Relatives buried their dead yesterday after three bombs outside a mosque and graveyard killed 31 people and injured nearly 300 in the latest sectarian attack to shake India.
The blasts targeted Muslim worshippers leaving the mosque in the religiously-divided town of Malegaon in western India, the scene of previous clashes between Hindus and Muslims.
The dead included eight children and six women caught by the three “crude” devices that were attached to bicycles, police said. Nearly half of the 297 injured were children, the state government said.
Forensic experts had collected some material from the scene but it was too early to say who was behind the attacks, said district police chief PK Jain.
Nobody has claimed responsibility for Friday’s bloodshed, when an estimated 2,500 people had gathered in a square outside the Nurani mosque after Friday prayers.
Political leaders appealed for calm as Muslims kept an overnight vigil on Shab-e-Barat, the Night of Blessing, when ancestors are remembered and prayers offered at their graves.
The attacks came two months after seven bombs, believed to have targeted Hindus, ripped through train carriages in Mumbai killing 186 people. The incident was blamed on Islamic militants.
Political leaders and police declined to speculate whether Friday’s blasts were a revenge attack on the Muslim-majority town in western Maharashtra state.
The president of the ruling Congress Party Sonia Gandhi and Home Minister Shivraj Patil visited the site of the blasts and the wounded.
Police said 95 remained in hospitals including 15 who were seriously injured.
Doctors said most of the injuries were from flying metal splinters packed into the bombs.
All the victims had died from the blast and not the stampede, said Malegaon health chief Bharat Wagh. Five bodies, including one child, remained unidentified.
The state government Saturday revised the death toll downwards from 37, saying they had initially included six people who had died in unrelated incidents.
Television pictures showed men and boys trampling on bloodied bodies as they battled to escape through a tunnel from the walled mosque compound.
Bystanders hauled children to safety as survivors loaded bodies into sheets and on to hand carts.
Television networks showed emotional survivors demanding bombers be hanged whether “Hindu or Muslim”.
Police declined to be drawn on who was responsible. “Certain articles have been found but there’s nothing to suggest who it could be and the identity of the people is unknown,” said Jain.
In a statement, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called on citizens to remain calm.
Hospital staff were under pressure to finish post-mortems so families could bury the dead during Shab-e-Barat, two weeks ahead of the fasting month of Ramadan.
Extra police were drafted to guard the graveyard Saturday where small groups of men gathered quietly to bury their dead.
Officers were stoned by an angry mob after the blasts but the town was quiet Saturday as community leaders urged people to stay calm.
Four months ago, anti-terrorist police seized explosives and guns in Malegaon, some 240km north of Mumbai, in a swoop on a suspected Islamic militant cell.
Malegoan used to be a wealthy textile town but a slump in the industry has caused high unemployment.
It has a history of religious strife. Some 11 people died in 2001 in clashes between police and demonstrators protesting against US air-strikes on Afghanistan.
Earlier this week, Singh said intelligence agencies had warned of further attacks in India.
The country has been hit by a series of bomb attacks in the last 12 months including on the holiest Hindu city of Varanasi in March and on New Delhi shopping markets.
The attacks have been blamed on Islamic militants.
Meanwhile verdicts are due next week for 123 defendants in a long-running trial linked to 1993 bombings in Mumbai that killed 257 people. The attacks have been blamed on the underworld and Islamic militants.
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