Posted on 02/18/2007 10:23:16 PM PST by CarrotAndStick
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Twin blasts aboard a train bound from India to Pakistan that killed at least 64 people were probably "an act of terror", the spokesman for India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said on Monday.
"This is what it suggests, that it was an act of terror," spokesman Sanyaja Baru told Reuters. A top state government official said most of the victims were Pakistanis but included some Indian security personnel.
More...
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2007-02-19T055655Z_01_DEL341952_RTRUKOC_0_US-INDIA-PAKISTAN-TRAIN.xml&pageNumber=0&imageid=∩=&sz=13&WTModLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage3
© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Two homemade bombs exploded aboard a train bound from India to Pakistan burning to death at least 64 passengers on Monday, with India's government labeling the attack "an act of terror".
Most of the victims were Pakistanis but included some Indians, officials said, calling the attack an apparent attempt to undermine the peace process between the nuclear armed rivals.
Two other unexploded homemade bombs were also found on the train and the track, with television pictures showing one of them, a large plastic suitcase with wires and a plastic bottle attached.
Another suitcase was stuffed with plastic bottles, which officials said contained some kind of flammable liquid, possibly petrol or kerosene.
Police said although the explosions were relatively small, the apparent intention had been to cause a deadly fire on at least four of the train's coaches.
"It's sabotage -- it's an act of terrorism like the one in Mumbai," Railways Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav told reporters, referring to serial bomb blasts in Mumbai last July that killed 186 people.
Like all Indian trains, most of the windows in the lower class compartments were barred with metal rods, meaning many people were trapped inside the train.
One survivor said passersby pulled some survivors out of one of the few windows that did not have rods. Local villagers also rushed to the scene to try and break open the bars. "I took a visa to come to India and see relatives, but I never realized it would become the last journey for my family," said Tara Chand, whose three sons and two daughters are missing and feared dead.
Continued...
He was returning to Pakistan after a month in India.
"I heard a loud explosion and then it was all smoke," he said. "Looking at the intensity of the smoke, many people must have suffocated to death before being charred."
At least 13 people were injured, with several arriving at a New Delhi hospital, their faces burned and wrapped in bandages.
Television pictures showed blackened and gutted carriages, with the heat of the fire having peeled the paint off the carriage exteriors.
"We have recovered two suitcases with dangerous explosive devices," Yadav said.
The coaches of the Samjhauta Express train, which connects New Delhi to the northern Pakistani city of Lahore, erupted in fire near Panipat town, about 80 km (50 miles) north of the Indian capital, in the early hours of Monday morning.
The incident comes days before Pakistani Foreign Minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri is due in New Delhi for talks with Indian leaders to push forward the slow-moving peace process.
"The aim is clear," Yadav told a news conference in his home city of Patna. "It is to put hurdles into the path of the peace process that has started between the two neighboring countries -- India and Pakistan."
Continued...
The Samjhauta Express was carrying around 527 passengers. The dead included three railway policemen.
"Most of the people are Pakistanis, but the casualties did include some Indian security personnel," the chief secretary of the Haryana state government Prem Prashant told Reuters.
Pakistan's government said it was in touch with Indian authorities and was collecting information, confirming that most of the dead were Pakistani.
The attack comes within days of the fifth anniversary of a fire on a train carrying Hindu pilgrims that killed 59 people in Godhra in the western state of Gujarat, and sparked communal riots in which around 2,500 people died, most of them Muslims.
That fire was blamed at the time on Muslims but some subsequent inquiries have suggested it could have been accidental.
Samjhauta is Hindi for understanding or agreement. The rail link was restored in 1976, but severed again after an attack on New Delhi's parliament in late 2001. It was restored in 2004.
A hardline Hindu group threatened to disrupt the service in 2000, while suspicion for this attack is also likely to fall on Muslim extremists opposed to the peace process between the South Asian rivals.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed "anguish and grief" at the loss of life and vowed to catch the culprits, according to a statement from his office. His spokesman Sanjaya Baru said the attack was probably "an act of terror".
Indian police said they sounded a general alert and mobilized their forces in New Delhi. The capital's metro rail network was also put on high alert.
© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.
CNN actually referred to it as a "mishap."
global jihad bump
Those raging Swiss killers again.
This service was started to facilitate the travel of citizens of India and Pakistan, into each others' countries. It is mostly used by Pakistanis, as they have their some of their Muslim relatives on the Indian side. Most Hindus and Sikhs(and others) fled what was formed into Pakistan, in 1947 itself, almost in total.
That's just stupid even for them.
Islam, "The Religion of Death"
I am glad Rooooooters clarified it. I really was struggling to give it a name. </s>
Yup. CNN calls it a "mishap" and BBC calls it a "tragedy"...
Guess the word "Atrocity by nameless murderers" is not politically correct...
And since they can't blame it on Bush, I suspect it will slip out of the headlines in a day or two.
The only time anything ever stays in the headlines and is actually attributed to Muslims is when there is absolutely no way of denying it and it's too huge to ignore (such as 9/11). Many people have commented that if there had been only one plane on 9/11, taken over by a small group of hijackers who all died in the attack, we would still be describing it as a "terrible random tragedy." Of course, everybody would have known or guessed what had happened, but it would never be officially acknowledged or discussed by the press.
The Jihad Express.... The Islamic pipeline into infidel territory.
Maybe India should think about closing its border.
Or else speed the process and convert to Sharia law.
Thailand just had 26 coordinated bomb blast in their country too- the article I read said "Thailand is over-run with Muslim extremists' lol. But fret not, their 'hearts and minds' campaign is going quite well as they reach out with love and good will to the muslim extremists. Sigh- We're going to follow right in their footsteps as the democrats sell us all out to the extemists here in USA.
The following link is a signature link and does not relate to this thread http://sacredscoop.com
Of course it is an act of terror. Of course it was done by jihadists who do nothing in their lives but hate. They intented people to burn alive. They are disgusting.
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