Victims of Mumbai's deadly bombings battled for life in crowded
city hospitals yesterday but millions of others put the threat of
more attacks to the back of their minds as India's financial hub
went back to work.
Investigators picked through mangled trains to search for clues
as to who was behind Tuesday's eight coordinated bomb blasts that
killed at least 200 people and wounded more than 700. Suspicion
fell on militants fighting Indian rule in Kashmir.
Just hours after the bloody attacks, the city's residents were
back at work and the stock market was steady. "It's a little scary
but we have no option to go back to work," said Amita Rane, a
24-year-old chartered accountant.
Yesterday morning, more than 12 hour after the attacks,
relatives and friends of victims were still poring over survivors'
lists at city hospitals or trying to identify charred and mutilated
corpses. Other relatives were inside the wards, tending to the
injured lying on blood-soaked beds.
Governments around the world tightened security in cities from
New Delhi to New York yesterday.
Extra police were deployed at railway stations, parks, markets
and religious institutions across India to prevent further attacks
and possible violence between Hindus and Muslims.
Police in Kashmir blamed the attacks there on the
Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, which authorities say was also
behind bomb blasts in crowded markets in New Delhi last October
that killed more than 60.
But the organization denied any role. "These are inhuman and
barbaric acts. Islam does not permit the killing of innocent
people," a spokesman told newspapers in Kashmir.
Death toll in Mumbai attacks rises to 200
The death toll from a series of bombs that struck Mumbai's
packed commuter trains rose Wednesday to 200, and India demanded
that Pakistan dismantle the "infrastructure of terrorism," but
leveled no direct accusation at its rival for the attacks.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the bombings would not slow
the country's strong economic growth, and that Indians would stand
united in the face of the attacks that killed 200 people.
"This is not the first time that the enemies of our nation have
tried to undermine our peace and prosperity," he said in a
televised address. "These elements have not yet understood that we
Indians can stand united. That we will stand united."
"No one can come in the path of our progress. The wheels of our
economy will move on," he said.
"We will win this war against terror."
The number of dead in the eight near-simultaneous bombings
during Tuesday evening's rush hour in India's financial hub has
risen steadily as rescue efforts uncovered more bodies and people
have succumbed to their injuries.
R. Patil, the deputy chief minister of Maharashtra State told
lawmakers that 200 bodies had been found in the twisted wreckage of
the trains. Mumbai is the capital of Maharashtra.
Officials say more than 700 people were wounded in the attack,
stunning a city that embodies India's global ambitions.
On Wednesday, Foreign Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna repeated
Indian demands that Pakistan crack down on the militants, who New
Delhi says operate from Islamabad's part of Kashmir.
"We would urge Pakistan to take urgent steps to dismantle the
infrastructure of terrorism on the territory under its control and
act resolutely against individuals and groups who are responsible
for terrorists' violence," he said.
His comments followed remarks by Pakistani Foreign Minister
Khurshid Mahmoud Kasuri, who said in a speech Tuesday at the
Carnegie Endowment for Peace in Washington that solving the Kashmir
issue "is the best way of tackling extremism in South Asia."
Sarna replied angrily to those comments.
"We find it appalling that Kasuri should seek to link this
blatant and inhuman act of terrorism against men, women and
children to the so-called lack of resolution of dispute between
India and Pakistan," Sarna told reporters.
Indian officials have been hesitant to blame Pakistan in the
wake of the bombings, although many here suspect the attacks were
the work of Kashmiri militants that New Delhi charges are trained,
armed and funded by Islamabad. Pakistan insists it only offers the
rebels diplomatic and moral support.
Meanwhile, a senior police official said investigators were
looking into a possible link with Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, a Kashmiri
militant group that has denied playing a role in the bombings.
"It is difficult to say definitely as this stage, but
Lashkar-e-Tayyaba can be involved going by the style of attack,"
said P.S. Pasricha, the director general of police for Maharashtra
state, where Mumbai is located.
Lashkar has, in the past, employed near-simultaneous explosions
to attack Indian cities.
But other Indian officials, speaking on the condition of
anonymity because the investigation was just getting under way,
cautioned that it was too early to accuse a specific group.
Also Wednesday, suspected Islamic militants wounded five Indian
tourists in a grenade attack in a resort town in Indian-controlled
Kashmir, police said. That came after eight people were killed
Tuesday by grenade attacks in Srinagar, Indian Kashmir's main
city.
Pakistan has harshly condemned the bombings, but analysts said a
Kashmiri link could slow ?a or even derail ?a the peace process
between the nuclear-armed neighbors.
Tuesday's attacks drew condemnation from around the world, and
Singh said "terrorists" were behind the bombings, which he called
"shocking and cowardly."
With the annual monsoon leaving the Indian port city of 16
million overcast and damp Wednesday, police picked through the
mangled train cars, placing evidence in blue plastic bags and
shooing away curious onlookers.
"We are just trying to establish what kind of explosives were
used and where exactly the bombs were placed but it appears they
were kept in the luggage racks," said police inspector Yeshwant
Patil, searching a wrecked train car.
Pasricha dismissed Indian media reports that the powerful
explosive RDX was used in the blast, saying investigators were
awaiting the results of forensic tests.
Governments around the world tightened security after the
blasts. Commuter transit systems have been tempting targets for
terrorists in recent years, with bombers killing 191 in Madrid,
Spain, in 2004, and 52 in London last year.
Mumbai also suffered blasts in 1993 that included the Mumbai
Stock Exchange, killing more than 250 people.
Pasricha said that in recent months authorities had become aware
Mumbai could be targeted.
"We had an idea since some months that Mumbai was a target," he
told reporters. "Since it is the financial capital, there are many
vulnerable areas in the city. Targets are well-known."
He described the bombings in India's commercial capital an
attempt to undermine its future.
"The country is on the path to progress," Pasricha said. The
attackers wanted to stoke fear and "stop investments."
But analysts said the blasts were unlikely to hurt investor
confidence, and the stock market rose a surprising 3 percent
Wednesday boosted by strong earnings results from Infosys
Technologies, a major software company.
Commuters, meanwhile, returned to the trains, although there was
less of a crush on the network that serves some 6 million people a
day, making it one of the world's most crowded.
"Our trust in Mumbai has been shattered, we had always thought
trains were safe. But what can we do? In this city trains are the
lifeline," said Brijesh Ojha, 35, who boarded a train at Bandra
station, where the first blast occurred. "They can't scare us this
way."
Worried residents searched for missing friends and relatives.
Dozens of people stood in hospitals, carrying pictures of the
missing. It was unclear how many people were missing, though it
appeared to be at least a few dozen.
"We have gone to four hospitals, he would have called by now,"
sobbed Shakuntala Wari who was looking for her 24-year-old son,
Vikas, at the Bhabha hospital near Bandra.
She had also visited a morgue. "I'm just very scared what
happened to him," she said.
Others crowded around hospital notice boards, poring over lists
of the dead and wounded posted by police. Many remained
unidentified by Wednesday afternoon.
(China Daily, Chinadaily.com.cn via agencies July 13,
2006)
