At least 42 people were killed and more than a hundred wounded yesterday when two bombs exploded in the heart of India's financial capital Mumbai, police said.
It was not immediately clear who planted the bombs. One exploded near the historic Gateway of India, a crowded monument in the tourist heart of the city, while the other exploded in a congested bullion market near a Hindu temple.
"There were legs and hands lying on top and inside my taxi. I had a miraculous escape," said taxi driver Lal Sahib Singh, whose clothes were soaked in blood. He had been driving past the bullion market when the bomb exploded.
It was the worst attack in Mumbai since 1993 when a series of bomb blasts killed at least 260 people. Those attacks were seen as retaliation for Muslim deaths following Hindu-Muslim riots.
Indian police have long feared a similar reaction following riots in the western state of Gujarat last year in which at least 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed.
India has also in the past blamed Pakistan-based militants fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, its only Muslim-majority state, for bombs and other attacks.
The Mumbai blasts followed a thaw in relations between nuclear-armed rivals Pakistan and India, which came close to war last year following a December 2001 attack on India's parliament that New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based militants.
Pakistan, which had denied involvement in the parliament attack, condemned the Mumbai blasts as "acts of terrorism."
Police official S.K. Tonapi said at least 42 people had been killed and more than 100 wounded.
A state home ministry official said there had been four blasts around the city, but could not confirm that all were bombs. Police said they had confirmation of only two bombs.
Bombay has been hit by a series of deadly bomb attacks in recent months.
Three died in December when a bomb exploded on a bus; 12 were killed in March by a bomb on a rush-hour train and in July, two people were killed in a fresh bomb attack on a bus.
A witness at the Gateway of India said he picked up four to five people who very badly injured and put them into taxis and asked the drivers to rush them to hospital.
"They were all soaked in blood," he said.
There were huge patches of blood on the ground next to the Gateway, along with parts of cars shattered and twisted by the blast.
Blood and broken glass lay scattered on bustling Dhanji Street in central Bombay, where the city's bullion trade is situated. Shop windows were smashed for several hundred meters along the street.
A subsidiary of a Hong Kong-based company that has lost control of two critical ports on the Panama Canal said it is seeking US$2 billion of compensation in damages from Panama over its “illegal” takeover of the ports. Panama Ports Co, a unit of Hong Kong’s CK Hutchison Holdings (長江和記實業), on Friday said in a statement that it is demanding the sum under international arbitration proceedings that it had already started. The Panamanian government last week seized control of the Balboa and Cristobal ports on each end of the Panama Canal, after the country’s Supreme Court declared earlier that a concession allowing
DETERRENCE: With 1,000 indigenous Hsiung Feng II and III missiles and 400 Harpoon missiles, the nation would boast the highest anti-ship missile density in the world With Taiwan wrapping up mass production of Hsiung Feng II and III missiles by December and an influx of Harpoon missiles from the US, Taiwan would have the highest density of anti-ship missiles in the world, a source said yesterday. Taiwan is to wrap up mass production of the indigenous anti-ship missiles by the end of year, as the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology has been meeting production targets ahead of schedule, a defense official with knowledge of the matter said. Combined with the 400 Harpoon anti-ship missiles Taiwan expects to receive from the US by 2028, the nation would have
POSSIBILITIES EMERGE: With Taiwan’s victory and Japan’s narrow win over Australia, Taiwan now have a chance to advance if South Korea also beat the Aussies Taiwan has high hopes that the national baseball team would advance to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarter-finals after clinching a crucial 5-4 victory over South Korea in a nail-biting extra-inning game at the Tokyo Dome yesterday. Boosted by three home runs — two solo shots by Yu Chang (張育成) and Cheng Tsung-che (鄭宗哲) and a two-run homer by Stuart Fairchild — the triumph gave Taiwan a much-needed second victory in the five-team Pool C, where only the top two finishers would advance to the knockout stage in Miami, Florida. Entering extra innings with the game tied at four apiece, Taiwan scored
MISSION OF PEACE: The foreign minister urged Beijing to respect Taiwan’s existence as an independent nation, and work together to ensure peace and stability in the region Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) yesterday rejected Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi’s (王毅) comments about Taiwan, criticizing China as a “troublemaker” in the international community and a disruptor of cross-strait peace. Speaking at a news conference on the sidelines of the Chinese National People’s Congress, Wang said that Taiwan has always been a territory of China and that it would be impossible for it to become its own country. The “return” of Taiwan to China was the natural outcome of the Chinese people’s resistance against Japan in World War II, and that any pursuit of independence was “doomed
RSS