At least 160 people, including women and children, were killed after a series of bomb blasts rocked tightly-packed commuter trains and suburban stations during rush hour in India's financial capital Mumbai (formerly Bombay) yesterday.
Harried officials said the death toll was likely to rise as the normally overcrowded trains were jam-packed due to heavy monsoon rains in the city of 18 million people, a majority of whom use the suburban railway.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for what police said appeared to be well-planned and co-ordinated serial bombings. But suspicion was likely to centre on Muslim militants fighting New Delhi's rule in northern disputed Kashmir, who have been blamed for several similar bomb attacks across India in the past.
Security sources said it was likely that the services of Mumbai's omnipotent underworld, involved in a similar serial bombing in 1993 in which more than 253 people died, might have been used to choreograph yesterday's explosions.
"We have reached certain conclusions but are not at liberty to disclose them at the moment," federal home minister Shivraj Patil said in New Delhi. He added that the authorities had advance information of an impending attack but were unaware of the time or place of its occurrence. Senior Mumbai police officials, however, contradicted this, claiming to have no prior intelligence of any attack.
"The blasts happened when the trains were most crowded," said DK Shankaran, chief secretary of Maharashtra state, of which Mumbai is the capital.
"It was a well planned and orchestrated attack," city police commissioner PS Pasricha said as chaos spread throughout Mumbai's crowded rail network following the explosions, which also injured at least another 440 people, many of them grievously.
Witnesses reported seeing body parts strewn along station platforms along the city's western line, which is a commuter artery into the city, as Indian television news channels broadcast footage of bystanders carrying the dead and injured to ambulances and searching through the mangled wreckage for survivors.
The blasts, which took place within half an hour of each other, ripped doors and windows off carriages and luggage and debris was strewn about, splattered with blood and body parts. A railway spokesman said all trains had been suspended in Mumbai and appealed to the public to stay away from the city's stations as police scoured the city looking for explosives. Police also raided other places across the country, but no details were available until late last night.
Police said the first blast occurred at about 6pm at Matunga in the suburbs, and that was followed by what was initially believed to be six others over the next 30 minutes at stations up and down the same line in a 20-25km radius. Last night reports suggested there may have been a total of eight explosions.
Mr Patil spoke to reporters after an emergency cabinet meeting chaired by prime minister Manmohan Singh. He said security has been heightened at all vital installations across the country.
The Mumbai blasts came just hours after suspected Islamist militants killed eight tourists, including a mother, her son and daughter-in-law in a series of grenade attacks which targeted holiday areas across Srinagar, the summer capital of northern India's insurgency-ridden Kashmir state.
Police blamed the bloodiest of the attacks on Islamic separatist rebel groups.
Meanwhile, neighbouring nuclear rival Pakistan, which India blames for fuelling the Kashmiri insurgency - a claim it denies - has condemned the Mumbai bombings as a "despicable act of terrorism".
Pakistan's president Pervez Musharraf and prime minister Shaukat Aziz expressed their condemnation and offered condolences for the loss of life. An official statement added that "terrorism is a bane of our times and it must be condemned, rejected and countered effectively and comprehensively".