Lucknow: India was on high alert on Wednesday after a bomb exploded in Varanasi, one of its holiest cities and top tourist destinations, killing a baby girl and wounding dozens of people.
Fearing more attacks, the home ministry instructed police to step up patrols and be vigilant for suspicious activity, as investigators picked over the site of the explosion at a crowded bathing area on the holy Ganges river.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the blast on Tuesday evening was the work of "terrorists", while a home-grown Islamist group, Indian Mujahedeen, claimed responsibility in an email sent to media outlets.
The explosion at around 6:30pm (1300 GMT) targeted one of the city's popular ritual bathing spots on the Ganges, causing a stampede in which a number of the victims were injured.
A one-year-old girl was killed and around 30 others were hurt, including two Italian tourists, though most of the injured would be discharged from hospital during the day, officials in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh told AFP.
One Italian was treated with first aid and discharged while another was kept in for observation in the private Heritage hotel in the city, hospital spokesman Ajay Rai told AFP.
The Press Trust of India news agency had earlier reported that four tourists from France, Germany, Japan and South Korea were also hurt, but AFP was unable to confirm this.
Varanasi police superintendent Vijay Bhushan said that a forensic team had begun work on the site of the blast while police traced the email from the Indian Mujahedeen to an open Internet connection in a suburb of Mumbai.
Closed circuit television from around the bomb site was also being examined by investigators.
Prime Minister Singh told reporters in New Delhi late Tuesday that the attack was "an attempt to weaken our resolve to fight the evil forces of terrorism, and the terrorists will not succeed."
The blast was of low-intensity and originated from a crude device that did not appear to have contained metal shrapnel that would have made the death and injury toll much higher, police said.
The last major attack in India was in February, when a bomb exploded in a restaurant popular with backpackers in the southwestern city of Pune, killing 17 people.
In September, attackers on a motorcycle opened fire outside the biggest mosque in New Delhi, injuring two Taiwanese men in an assault also claimed by the Indian Mujahedeen.
Tuesday's blast came a day after the anniversary of the 1992 razing of a mosque by Hindu zealots in the Uttar Pradesh temple town of Ayodhya, which sparked some of post-independence India's worst communal violence.
The email from the Indian Mujahedeen said the attack was retaliation for a recent court ruling that divided the disputed Ayodhya site between Hindu and Muslim claimants.
The verdict, which has been appealed, was widely seen as favouring the Hindu litigants.
The authenticity of the email was still being verified, Home Minister P. Chidambaram said. Indian Mujahedeen claimed responsibility for a series of blasts in the Indian capital in 2008 which left 14 people dead and several others wounded.
The group, which also calls itself "the militia of Islam", first came to public attention in November 2007 following serial blasts in Uttar Pradesh.
Large numbers of Hindu devotees gather in Varanasi throughout the year to cremate their dead on the banks of the Ganges, and bathe in the waters.
In 2006, some 20 people were killed and 60 wounded in two bomb explosions at a temple and a train station in Varanasi that were blamed on Muslim militants.
AFP
