At least four bombs exploded in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad yesterday, killing at least one person, just a day after another set of coordinated blasts in the country’s southern IT hub, police said.
The Press Trust of India news agency said six explosions occurred while police reported that one blast occurred at a diamond-trading market in Ahmedabad, the commercial capital of Gujarat state.
The reports came a day after eight low-intensity bombs went off in the high-tech southern Indian city of Bangalore, leaving one dead and seven wounded.
The Times Now news television network said at least 27 people were injured in one of the attacks in Ahmedabad.
Other television stations said the explosives were on bicycles and detonated with remote devices.
Police said that the first explosion was reported at around 6pm on a bridge in Ahmedabad, a communally sensitive city that saw bloody Hindu-Muslim riots in 2002.
“All the explosions occurred within a span of one hour and one of the bombs appeared to have been kept in a passenger bus,” a police control room spokesman said.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh condemned the serial attack and urged Ahmedabad residents to remain calm, his office said in new Delhi.
Yesterday’s blasts were in the Ahmedabad’s crowded old city dominated by its Muslim community.
“According to information so far, there have been four to five blasts,” said a duty officer at the police control room in Ahmedabad, who was not authorized to give his name. “We have heard one person is dead.”
So far, police said they had few leads into Friday’s Bangalore bombings.
Another unexploded bomb was found yesterday near a shopping mall in Bangalore, but it was unclear whether the bomb was newly planted or meant to have exploded during Friday’s attacks, police said.
“Special squads have been formed to find out who is behind the blasts,” Bangalore’s Additional Commissioner of Police M.R. Pujar said yesterday.
India has suffered a wave of bombings in recent years, with targets ranging from mosques and Hindu temples to trains. It is unusual for any group to claim responsibility for attacks.
Former British prime minister Rishi Sunak on Wednesday urged so-called middle powers to become a “poisonous shrimp” to carve out strategic economic leverage in a more turbulent global environment. Sunak drew from a metaphor by former Singaporean prime minister Lee Kuan Yew (李光耀): A big fish will eat a smaller fish, and the smaller fish will eat the shrimp. Lee made the point a year after the Asian nation’s independence in 1966 that the city-state needed to build up its defense mechanisms — like a shrimp that stings — so it would be left alone by predators. “He was thinking about what Singapore’s
POLL POSITION: Democrats criticized the timing of the raid, saying that the US justice department historically avoids public investigations within 60 days of an election Federal agents on Monday searched the home of Democratic US Representative Ilhan Omar, a startling escalation in a criminal investigation that brings renewed focus to the frequent target of White House derision in the final weeks of her re-election bid. The search of the Minnesota congresswoman’s home so close to next month’s midterm contests that would determine control of the US House and the Senate was swiftly condemned by top Democrats in Congress, who raised questions about the timing given longstanding US Department of Justice (DOJ) protocol to avoid overt investigative steps involving political candidates in the direct run-up to an
A Rhode Island pumpkin grower appears to have broken the world record for the heaviest pumpkin, with his giant squash topping the record by nearly 136kg. Ron Wallace of Greene, Rhode Island, weighed his pumpkin on Saturday at a contest in New England and is waiting for the Guinness World Records to confirm he smashed the record, set about a week earlier by a grower in England. Wallace said he has been in contact with Guinness officials who say his record is on track to be verified. “It’s truly massive, it was a pleasure to grow,” Wallace said on Monday. Guinness World Records lists
BUILDUP: The report comes as Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi boosts defense spending in the face of China’s military expansion and the North Korean threat French defence contractor Thales will establish a maintenance and operational support base in Japan in what is seen as the first such move by a foreign firm in the country, a report said yesterday. Thales chairman and CEO Patrice Caine told the Nikkei business daily that the base “will mark a milestone toward Thales’ long-term engagement in Japan.” It is believed to be the first time a foreign defense company has established a dedicated base in Japan for the maintenance and operation of Japanese defense equipment, the Nikkei said. It added that Thales might also expand its Japan-based business to
RSS