World | India

Day 4: figures and facts

  • Published: 00:00 July 14, 2006
  • Gulf News

  • The death toll from the Mumbai train blasts: 179
  • People escaped with injuries: 773
  • Bodies remained unidentified at Sion Hospital in Mumbai: 2
  • Bodies were yet to be handed back to relatives: 6

Investigation

- Forensic examinations have confirmed that the explosive used in the serial blasts was not the deadly RDX - it could have been dynamite or ammonium nitrate.

- Indian officials suspect Pakistan's spy agency had a role in the blasts. Police continued raids in and around Mumbai, a day after India named Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group as the prime suspect behind the attacks. "Activists of SIMI have probably facilitated this but the planning was ISI," a senior Home Ministry official said, referring to the outlawed Students Islamic Movement of India and the secretive Inter-Services Intelligence agency of Pakistan.

- Investigators were looking at international calls made from phone booths immediately after the blasts, particularly to Pakistan. "What we can say is that there was involvement of local people, maybe with outside support," said Mumbai police's anti-terror squad chief.

- Police in Nepal were probing possible links between two Pakistani men arrested here on explosives charges and the serial train blasts in Mumbai. The men were arrested at a downtown hotel on Wednesday for the 2001 discovery in a Kathmandu flat of 16kg of the powerful RDX explosive.

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