INDIA: At three minutes past six last night a blast "that burst eardrums" sliced through the first-class men's compartment of a train sliding into Khar station, in Mumbai's western suburbs.
"Then there was silence for 30 seconds," said Jency Jacob, a reporter for Indian television channel CNN-IBN who was on the train. "Suddenly when people realised it was a bomb they started jumping out of the windows. When we looked back the roof of the train had been ripped off, there was blood everywhere."
Mr Jacob was a witness to the first of a series of bomb blasts along Mumbai's lifeline, the western railway. The blasts were timed to rip apart carriages during rush hour, when the trains were packed with commuters going north to their homes.
The effect was to spread devastating chaos in India's commercial heart. A shopkeeper at a market near one blast said it was so powerful they thought they had been "hit by lightning".
The force of the explosions ripped doors and windows off carriages, and luggage and debris was strewn about, splattered with blood.
Survivors were seen clutching bloody bandages to their heads and faces. Shoes, handbags and clothes littered the tracks.
Phone lines were quickly swamped with people ringing to find out what had happened to loved ones. Anger simmered as the police and ambulances failed to arrive, stuck in Mumbai's dense traffic.
Mumbai, a metropolis of about 16 million, has been hit by bomb blasts in the past. But yesterday's were the worst since almost 200 people died in a series of blasts in 1993 that targeted the stock exchange and other commercial landmarks.