INDIA:A SERIES of bomb blasts ripped through crowded markets and a packed Hindu temple in India's western tourist city of Jaipur last night, killing at least 60 people in what officials claim was a terrorist strike.
Another 100 were injured, many of them seriously.
Police said at least six bombs strapped to cycle rickshaws exploded within a 12-minute span in a crowded market place packed with jewellery shops, restaurants and palaces in Jaipur's walled city, 260km from the federal capital New Delhi.
A television news channel reported that seven bombs had exploded in the area that draws thousands of Indian and overseas tourists every year and that an eighth did not detonate and was defused later.
State police chief Amerjeet Gill called it a "terror attack", but declined to elaborate.
"The attempt was to cause the maximum damage to human life," he declared of the first ever such bombing in Jaipur. No one has claimed responsibility so far.
President Pratibha Patil and prime minister Manmohan Singh condemned the blasts, which occurred around 7.35pm local time in a 50-metre radius in an area inhabited by both Hindus and Muslims.
"The blasts are part of a big conspiracy" junior home minister Sriprakash Jaiswal said, adding that security at airports and railway stations in northern India had been tightened as national security commandoes, including forensic experts, rushed to Jaipur.
And though he did not directly hold Pakistan-based militants responsible for the attack, he blamed "foreign forces", an official euphemism for Muslim insurgents backed by Islamabad who have been fighting Indian rule over the disputed Jammu and Kashmir province for nearly two decades.
Police said the first blast ripped through a popular vegetarian restaurant, followed by a second in the adjoining, teeming market place. A third exploded in a crowded Hindu temple on what is their holiest day of the week. The fourth bomb went off at Sanganer Gate, the entrance to the walled city. Two more exploded close by.
