Police examine video footage in bid to identify bakery attackers

Pune (AP) Indian investigators yesterday examined security camera footage as they tried to identify who planted a deadly bomb in a bakery popular with foreigners.

No one has claimed responsibility for the Saturday night attack that killed nine people in the city of Pune, 200km southeast of Mumbai.

Suspicions, however, quickly fell on militant groups blamed for past attacks, including the 2008 Mumbai massacre when Pakistan-based militants ran amok in the country's financial hub.

Officials said one or two people posing as customers left a backpack containing a bomb in the German Bakery. In addition to the nine deaths, 60 people were wounded.

While the restaurant did not have security cameras, police were examining videos shot by cameras installed at a hotel across the street, police said.

Police yesterday showed the footage to bakery workers who had spotted the abandoned backpack before it exploded, a police officer said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to talk to reporters about an ongoing investigation.

The bombing was India's first major terrorist attack since the Mumbai siege and came just a day after India and Pakistan scheduled their first formal dialogue since New Delhi suspended wide-ranging peace talks in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks.

Security forces have been put on high alert at airports, train stations and markets across India, and Hindu nationalists have blamed Pakistan and demanded the talks be cancelled.

Militant group

Meanwhile, Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said India wanted to question a terror suspect linked to Pakistani militant groups. The suspect is detained in the United States and has been accused of scouting out targets ahead of the Mumbai attack.

Officials said David Headley had cased the Osho Ashram, a meditation retreat near the German Bakery, and the Chabad Jewish centre.

Nitzan Nuriel, head of counterterrorism at Israel's National Security Agency, said the Pune attack wasn't directed at Chabad.

"The attack in india was not directed at Chabad house, even though Chabad houses appear on the potential lists of targets maintained by some of the groups that operate in the area," Nuriel said.

Washington has been sharing intelligence with Indian agencies, but so far has not allowed them to meet with Headley.

peace dialogue

pakistan talks to resume

India and Pakistan will resume peace talks as planned, government sources said yesterday, despite a deadly restaurant bombing at the weekend that led to calls for the negotiations to be cancelled.

A government source in New Delhi told AFP there was "no change" to a meeting of Indian and Pakistani foreign secretaries on February 25. It will mark the first official talks between the South Asian rivals in 14 months.

Another source said the government would refrain from any "knee-jerk reaction", amid calls from the main opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the meeting to be called off.

India broke off all official dialogue with Pakistan following the November 2008 Mumbai attacks.

— AFP