INDIA: Police in India's capital, New Delhi, claim to have identified "sleeper" cells which provided logistical support to the bombers who set off three devices in the city at the weekend, killing 62 people.
In their largest ever manhunt, involving more than 1,000 investigators, the city's police yesterday said that they planned to release a sketch of one of the suspects linked to the explosions, which also injured 200 people, many of them seriously.
The sketch will be based on accounts from passengers who were on board a bus which was saved by its conductor, who threw one of the devices off the moving vehicle just before it detonated.
Some of the passengers reportedly saw one of the suspected bombers alight from the crowded bus minutes before the explosive device was discovered.
"We are trying to confirm details before we come out with the sketch," joint city police commissioner Karnail Singh said yesterday.
Mr Singh said that nobody had been arrested so far for planting the bombs, which exploded a few days ahead of the biggest Hindu and Muslim festivals of the year.
A relatively obscure Kashmiri insurgent group, Islami Inqilabi Mahaz, the IIM or Islamic Revolutionary Front, which is fighting for an Islamic homeland in the disputed region, has claimed responsibility for the attacks.
The IIM featured in the US "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report in 1997, in which it was blamed for killing four American citizens working for a Texan petroleum company in Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi.
FBI sources said that the IIM was closely aligned to the better-known Lashkar-e-Taiba ("Army of the Pure") terrorist organisation, which is known to have its base at Muridke, near the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore.
Lashkar, which also has close links to al-Qaeda and aims to unite Muslims across the world through a campaign of religious activism, has been blamed by Delhi for a number of dramatic terrorist attacks, including the one on its parliament in 2001 which almost caused nuclear rivals India and Pakistan to go to war.
A Pakistani national and Lashkar member, accused of masterminding an attack five years ago on Delhi's 17th century Red Fort, was sentenced to death on Monday, prompting investigators to consider a link with the weekend bombings.
Meanwhile, India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, told Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, that the bombings were "linked to foreign elements" and has demanded that Islamabad act against terrorism directed at India.
An Indian foreign ministry statement, issued after Gen Musharraf had telephoned Mr Singh on Monday to offer his condolences for the killings, said: "The prime minister again drew the president's attention to Pakistan's commitment to ending cross-border terrorism and said that we continue to be disturbed and dismayed at indications of the external linkages of terrorist groups with the bombings."
The explosions cast a pall of gloom over Diwali (the annual Hindu festival of lights), the equivalent of Christmas, which is always celebrated in a carnival atmosphere.
Instead, anguished and weary people continued searching for missing loved ones among rows of charred bodies.
Delhi's markets, which are always packed with shoppers in the days ahead of Diwali, were relatively empty yesterday as nearly 100,000 police and security personnel were deployed across the city.
Many shopkeepers took down their colourful displays of bunting in a gesture of respect to the families of those who lost their lives and were injured in the bomb attacks.