Twin Bombings In India Kill At Least 37

A pair of bombings tore through crowded public areas in this southern city Saturday night, one of them destroying one of Hyderabad's most popular family restaurants, killing at least 37 people and wounding about 50, officials said.

Security forces were put on alert and thousands of police and paramilitary Rapid Action Force officers were deployed across the city, which has long been plagued by Hindu-Muslim tensions and occasional violence between the two communities.

The blasts — one in a park during a laser show, and one in the crowded restaurant — went off minutes apart, officials said.

A third bomb was later found under a footbridge and defused in the city's busy Bilsukh Nagar commercial area, and another in a movie theater in the Narayanguba neighborhood, a police official said on condition of anonymity. Late-night movie showings were then cancelled across the city.

"This is a terrorist act," Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, the chief minister for Andhra Pradesh state, where Hyderabad is located, told reporters, urging people to remain calm.

K. Jana Reddy, the state home minister, said at least 37 people had been killed — most in the restaurant, Gokul Chat, in the city's Kothi market, and the remainder at the laser show in Lumbini park.

About 50 people were injured, he said.

Both spots are popular with both Hindus and Muslims.

The restaurant was completely destroyed by the bomb, which had been placed at the entrance. Hours afterward, blood-covered tin plates and broken glasses littered the road outside. At the outdoor auditorium where the show was held, large pools of blood and dead bodies could be seen lying between rows of seats punctured by shrapnel. Some seats were hurled 100 feet away by the force of the bomb.

Police officers with flashlights and sniffer dogs were searching under chairs looking for more explosive devices.

"We heard the blast and people started running out past us. Many of them had blood streaming off them," said P.K. Verghese, the security manager at the laser show. "It was complete chaos. We had to remove the security barriers so people could get out."

Hyderabad is a city of 7 million people, about 40 percent of them Muslim. India, which has more than 1.1 billion people, is about 80 percent Hindu and 13 percent Muslim.

In May, a bomb at a historic Hyderabad mosque killed 11 people. Another five people died in clashes that erupted after that blast between security forces and Muslim protesters angered by what they said was a lack of police protection.

There has been little progress in the investigation into that bombing, though Indian media reports say investigators suspect Muslim militants were to blame. Underlying the divide, Muslim leaders have said they do not trust local police to handle the investigation into the bombing.

A series of terrorist bombings have ripped across India in the past two years. In July 2006, bombs in seven Mumbai commuter trains killed more than 200 people. Those bombings have been blamed on Pakistan-based Muslim militants.

While authorities often blame Muslim militants for blasts, there were no immediate accusations against Islamic groups in connection with the Saturday blasts.

Much of India's Hindu-Muslim animosity is rooted in disputes over the Himalayan territory of Kashmir.

Among those arrested in connection with the Mumbai train bombings were alleged members of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, or Army of the Pure, one of more than a dozen Islamic insurgent groups fighting to oust India from Muslim-majority Kashmir.

Kashmir is divided between India and mostly Muslim Pakistan, with both claiming it in its entirety. The rebels want Kashmir's independence or merger with Pakistan.

The 17-year Kashmir insurgency has killed more than 68,000 people. In recent years, the militants have increasingly staged attacks on Indian targets outside the Himalayan region.