Major Terror Attack in India
Here’s the Times of India report on two simultaneous bombings in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad today: 30 killed, 60 wounded as terror strikes Hyderabad.
HYDERABAD: In a major terror strike, at least 30 persons were killed and about 60 injured in two powerful near-simultaneous blasts at a crowded park and a popular eating joint in Hyderabad on Saturday evening.
Twenty four people died when an explosion ripped through Gokul Chat Shop at Kothi locality at around 7.50 pm, Andhra Pradesh Home Minister K Jana Reddy told reporters.
In another blast five minutes earlier at a place five kilometres away, six persons perished in a blast in an auditorium in Lumbini Amusement Park near the state secretariat in the heart of the city when a laser show was on, he said.
Reddy said about 500 people were in the auditorium at the time of the incident.
The blast ripped through the middle row of the auditorium when the show had just begun.
So powerful was the blast that some of bodies were flung into the air and scattered over the area.
No details on the perpetrators yet, but coordinated bombings of civilian targets is a well-known Islamist tactic.
UPDATE at 8/25/07 10:23:04 am:
The death toll is rising, and Reuters now reports three simultaneous blasts, and four unexploded bombs discovered.
HYDERABAD, India (Reuters) - Three explosions within minutes, one at a street-side food stall and two in an amusement park, killed at least 34 people in Hyderabad on Saturday, police and officials said. …
“I will be able to confirm that around 34 have been reported dead,” R.V. Chandravadan, one of the city’s top officials, told the NDTV television channel. …
The most deadly of the blasts in Hyderabad was at a road-side food stand, where at least 24 people were killed, police said.
The other target was the Lumbini amusement park where at least two blasts occurred around 7:40 p.m. local time during a popular laser show, TV channels said.
“I saw chairs flying in the air along with bodies,” said Vineet, a young man who had been watching the show with about 200 other people.
Four unexploded bombs were also found, two in Lumbini and two others in cinemas in the city, which were defused once people had been evacuated, police said.