Over 65 killed as serial blasts rock New Delhi
Pakistan condemns terror act - Indian Premier blames ‘terrorist elements’
From Meerza Iqbal Baig

NEW DELHI—Powerful explosions ripped through crowded markets of New Delhi just moments apart, killing at least 65 people in an apparently coordinated attack on the eve of a major Hindu holiday.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Prime Minister Manmohan Singh blamed “terrorist elements,” as suspicion fell on militant groups opposed to the peace process between India and neighbour Pakistan.
Dozens of people were reported injured in Saturday’s blast and local television channels showed pictures of the carnage, with blood on the pavements and the remains of ruined shops heaped in piles of wreckage on the streets.
Officials said the death toll was expected to rise from the blasts, which hit at least two bustling markets — Paharganj and Sarojini Nagar — where tens of thousands of holiday shoppers had thronged the streets.
A third was reported in the Okhla industrial district while a fourth reported at Gole market turned out to be a hoax. The blasts set off blazes and the fire department said every squad had been sent out to battle the fires.
“It appeared as if 10 bombs had gone off together,” said Sachinder Pal Singha at Sarojini market, where blazes continued to burn their way through devastated shops and alleyways.
“People were running in panic,” he told AFP. “I threw shawls on top of people because they were on fire”.
Thirty-seven bodies had been brought into one hospital, federal home minister Shivraj Patil was quoted as saying by the Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency.
Meanwhile, federal health secretary Prasanna Hota said 13 bodies had been brought into three other hospitals in New Delhi. PTI said some 70 people, including some foreigners, had been injured. With the nation preparing for Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights that begins on Tuesday, the blasts — which hit early Saturday evening — appeared designed to inflict maximum casualties in the busy shopping districts.
“The target is clearly the innocent citizens,” the prime minister said in a statement issued by his office.
“The prime minister has expressed shock and distress over the blasts but has asserted that militant violence would not weaken the country’s resolve to fight terrorism,” the statement said.
“Efforts to spread chaos and disturb peace will not be allowed to succeed at any cost”.
Pakistan denounced the attacks as a “criminal act of terrorism” and called on Delhi to quickly bring the culprits to justice.
“Pakistan strongly condemns the terrorist attacks in New Delhi, which have resulted in the loss of a number of innocent lives,” Islamabad’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
“The people and government of Pakistan are shocked at this barbaric act,” it said.
India and Pakistan, nuclear-armed rivals both created at the partition of the region in 1947, began a tentative peace process last year.
But they have fought three wars since their creation, two of them over the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, with India repeatedly blaming Pakistan for allowing Muslim militants to enter its sector of the divided region.
Rohan Gunaratna, the head of research into terrorism at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore, said groups opposed to the peace process were likely to blame.
“It is very likely that the attacks were conducted by a terrorist group opposed to the peace process between India and Pakistan,” he told AFP in an interview.
Momentum for peace appeared to have been on the rise since the powerful October 8 earthquake that was centred in Kashmir, which killed at least 54,000 people, most of them on the Pakistani side.
Pakistani analyst Hasan Askari said the blasts may have been carried out by extremists trying to stall talks between the two nations on opening the Line of Control, the de facto border that splits Kashmir between the two nations.
Diplomats from the two sides met to discuss the matter earlier Saturday.
“The extremists think that this would lead to the softening or disappearance of the Line of Control which they do not favour,” said Askari, former head of the political science department at Lahore’s Punjab University.
“It could also be an act of indigenous Indian extremists linked with dissidents and separatist movements in the northeast,” the analyst said.