Indian leaders appeal for calm after attacks

INDIA: Indian leaders issued appeals for calm Sunday after a wave of bombings killed 45 people and left 162 injured in the religiously-tense western city of Ahmedabad.

The string of 16 bombings ripped through crowded places in the tinderbox city, which was the scene of deadly Hindu-Muslim riots in 2002, with targets including markets, buses and then hospitals struggling to treat the victims.

Indian television channels said a little-known Islamist group calling itself the “Indian Mujahedeen” had claimed responsibility for the attacks, which came a day after a similar wave of bombings in the southern tech city of Bangalore.

Bomb squads defused at least three unexploded devices found in Ahmedabad on Sunday, Indian news channels reported, while soldiers staged a ‘flag march’ — or show of authority — in sensitive parts of the city.

There were also reports of police raids, including on a house on the outskirts of India’s financial hub Mumbai from where the email claiming responsibility may have been sent.

Ahmedabad, however, was largely calm on Sunday morning, with large numbers of police and paramilitaries mobilised. Indian President Pratibha Patil expressed her “grief and sorrow” and also “appealed to the people of Ahmedabad to maintain peace and harmony,” her office said in a statement.

Many of the victims had been peppered with red-hot nuts, bolts and ball bearings packed into bombs that were clearly designed to cause maximum casualties, doctors said.

At Ahmedabad’s Civil Hospital, one of two medical facilities that were hit, victims could be seen writhing on the floor after the attack, their bodies punctured by flying pellets, and crying for treatment from overstretched and panicked staff.

“I had come here with other injured people who needed help. I was getting out of the ambulance when I saw a blue light and then I fell down,” said one of the wounded, 52-year-old Laxman Dev.

Ahmedabad, Sunday, AFP