Bomb blasts hit Hyderabad killing 18, injuring 52

At least 18 people were killed and 52 wounded when bombs ripped through crowded areas of the Indian city of Hyderabad yesterday in what the Prime Minister called a “dastardly act”.

The bombs targeted a mainly Hindu district in a suburb of the city, a hub of India’s information-technology industry which has a large Muslim population, and came with the nation on alert after the recent hanging of a Kashmiri separatist. “We have 18 people dead,” a police officer who declined to be named told AFP. Another senior police officer at the scene of one of the explosions, Amit Garg, put the number of wounded at 52. Police said many of the injured were in critical condition in hospital.

“This is a dastardly act and the guilty will not go unpunished,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said of the attacks, the deadliest to hit India since 13 people died in a 2011 bombing outside the High Court in the capital New Delhi. But Singh also appealed for “calm” in the aftermath of the Hyderabad blasts. City police said there had been three explosions, but Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde said he could only confirm two.

AFP