Indian police conduct raid after Ahmedabad bombings

Ahmedabad: Authorities scoured the western Indian city of Ahmedabad on Sunday for those responsible for a series of bombings that killed at least 45 people, detaining 30 people as a little-known group claimed responsibility for the attack. It was the second series of blasts in India in two days.

"In the name of Allah the Indian Mujahideen strike again! Do whatever you can, within 5 minutes from now, feel the terror of Death!" said an e-mail from the group sent to several Indian television stations minutes before the blasts began.

The e-mail's subject line said, "Await 5 minutes for the revenge of Gujarat," an apparent reference to the 2002 riots in the state which left 1,000 people dead. The historic city of Ahmedabad is one of the largest cities in Gujarat and was the scene of much of the 2002 violence.

State government spokesman Jaynarayan Vyas said 45 people were killed and 161 wounded when at least 16 bombs went off on Saturday evening in several crowded neighbourhoods. The attack came a day after seven smaller blasts killed two people in the southern technology hub of Bangalore.

Another unexploded bomb was found and defused early yesterday, the city's police commissioner, O.P. Mathur, said.

He said the police had detained 30 people in their investigation.

Investigators in Surat, a city about 255 kilometres south of Ahmedabad, found a car carrying detonators and a liquid that police suspect may be ammonium nitrate, a chemical often used in explosive devices, city police chief R.M.S. Brar said.

Cities around the country were put on alert and security was stepped up at markets, hospitals, airports and train stations.

The e-mail was sent by a group calling itself Indian Mujahideen which was unknown before May, when it said it was behind a series of bombings in Jaipur, also in western India, that killed 61 people. Saturday's e-mail, sent from a Yahoo account and written in English, was made available by CNN-IBN, one of the TV stations that received the warning. In its e-mail, the group did not mention the bombings in Bangalore and it was not clear if the attacks were connected.

Some TV stations reported Sunday that police in Mumbai, India's business hub, had traced the e-mail to an address in the city but officials denied this.

"An e-mail was received by many news organisations. We are inquiring into that. We haven't traced it yet," city police chief A.N. Roy said.

The bombs on Saturday went off in two separate spates. The first, near a busy market, left some of the dead sprawled beside stands piled high with fruit, next to twisted bicycles. The second group of blasts went off near a hospital.

Distraught relatives of the victims crowded the city's hospitals. One of the wounded was a six-year-old boy whose father was killed in the blasts. He lay in a hospital bed with his arms covered in bandages and wounds on his face.

Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, called the blasts "a crime against humanity." He said the bombings appeared to have been masterminded by a group or groups "using a similar modus operandi all over the country."

Federal Home Minister Shivraj Patil said in New Delhi: "Anti-national elements have been trying to create panic among the people of our country. Today's blasts in Ahmedabad seem to be part of the same strategy."

Do you know anyone who was affected by the bombings? How have they coped with this tragedy?