35 killed, 150 injured in Indian mosque blasts
50 coal miners’ bodies recovered after explosion

Mumbai—At least 35 people were killed and 150 injured after at least two blasts near a mosque in the west Indian town of Malegaon, officials said.

The first explosion happened Friday as hundreds of Muslims left the Nurani mosque in the rural town after prayers on the Islamic festival day of Shab-e-Barat, police and reports said.

Police said one blast was heard near a graveyard on a day when Muslims traditionally remember their ancestors and offer prayers at their graves. It is a key date ahead of the start of the holy month of Ramadan.

A curfew was declared as state politicians from western Maharashtra and police teams headed to the area, some 180 kilometres (110 miles) north of the economic centre of Mumbai.

Police, who said they did not know the cause of the blasts, were on high alert across the state of western Maharashtra, and mobile telephone networks in the town were down.

“I am confirming some blasts,” police chief P.K. Jain told NDTV news channel. “I do not know what has caused the blasts.”

Details of casualties taken to the other two hospitals in the town were not immediately available.

The area has a history of communal tension between Hindus and Muslims, and extra officers were drafted in to try to ensure calm in the town, which has a majority Muslim population.

D.K. Sankaran, the state’s chief secretary, said police heading to the area had been stoned by an angry mob.

“Things are fairly tense but under control,” he told CNN-IBN channel. “A curfew has been declared.”

Anti-terrorist police seized explosives and guns in the town in May in a swoop on a suspected Islamic militant cell.

Malegaon used to be a wealthy textile town but a slump in the industry has caused high unemployment.

Mumbai joint commissioner of police Arup Patnaik said that Mumbai had been put on a high state of alert. “We have to be very vigilant,” he told NDTV.

The Malegaon blasts come four days before verdicts are to be announced for 123 defendants in a long-running trial linked to 1993 bomb attacks in Mumbai that killed 257.

The series of blasts in 1993 in the city were blamed on a group of underworld figures and Islamic militants, and were allegedly in retaliation for nationwide Hindu-Muslim riots between December 1992 and January 1993.

The riots were triggered by the razing of a mosque at Ayodhya in northern Uttar Pradesh state by Hindu zealots in December 1992.

One bomb carried on the back of a bicycle went off as the faithful left the Nurani mosque in the rural town of Malegaon, the home ministry said.

The mosque was packed for Friday prayers on the eve of Shab-e-Barat.

Meanwhile, Rescue workers found the bodies of 50 coal miners killed in a mine explosion in eastern India as angry relatives accused the state-owned company of negligence.

Officials said they were still seeking four men missing from Wednesday’s blast as relatives watching the rescue operation accused Bharat Coking Coal Ltd (BCCL) of failing to protect the miners’ lives.

“Our men were sent into the mines though the authorities knew it was dangerous and gas was seeping through,” said one weeping woman whose husband’s body was recovered Friday from the mine in the Jharia coalfield near Dhanbad, 170 kilometres (105 miles) from Jharkhand state capital Ranchi.

Several thousand relatives and friends of the miners gathered at the mine to watch as the bodies were brought to the surface.

Officials could not immediately state the cause of the blast but said it might have been triggered by highly-inflammable methane gas coming into contact with oxygen. They said any worker who survived the blast would have died within minutes from deadly carbon monoxide gas.

Nitish Priyadarshi, a geologist who was employed by the state government as a consultant, said the area “is known to have beds of methane gas. It is also a fact that methane seeps through the layers of soil and causes fires.”

“Instances of gas seeping into the mines and causing fires is well known,” he said.

BCCL managing director Partho Bhattacharya told AFP rescue teams “counted 50 bodies lying deep in the mine shaft at the Bhatdih colliery.

“Of these, 43 have been brought up ... The work is proceeding at a fast pace and we hope to complete it by the end of today (Friday),” he said.

A BCCL official manning an emergency control room said rescue workers were looking for four more missing workers.

“Either they came out within minutes of the explosion or the rescue workers have not been able to find their bodies. We’re continuing our search,” he said.

Carbon monoxide readings taken in the shaft after the explosion showed the deadly gas was present at levels that would have caused death “in two to three minutes”, BCCL’s safety manager B. Ramarao said.

Mineral-rich Jharkhand state’s Dhanbad area has a history of accidents. In 2004, 31 workers died after a mine filled with water.