42 killed in Indian bombings

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WORLD / Asia-Pacific

42 killed in Indian bombings

(AP)
Updated: 2007-08-26 15:42

HYDERABAD - Foreign-based Islamic extremists may have been behind a pair
of bombings that tore through a popular restaurant and a park in this
southern Indian city, killing at least 42 people, an Indian official said
Sunday.

Saturday's attacks were the latest in a series of bombings to hit India
in the last year, and nearly all have been blamed on Islamic extremists
with foreign connections?even when Muslims were targeted.

Medics move a person injured in a bomb blast on a stretcher, at a
hospital in Lumbini Park in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad August
25, 2007. [Reuters]?

"Available information points to the involvement of terrorist
organizations based in Bangladesh and Pakistan," Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy,
the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh state, where Hyderabad is located,
told reporters after an emergency state Cabinet meeting.

Reddy did not name any groups, but Indian media reports, quoting unnamed
security officials, identified the Bangladesh-based Harkatul Jihad
Al-Islami organization.

Reddy declined to provide more details. "It is not possible to divulge
all this information," he said.

Harkatul, which is banned in Bangladesh, wants to establish strict
Islamic rule in the Muslim-majority nation governed by secular laws.

Bangladesh's Foreign Ministry said Dhaka had not been informed of the
allegations.

A spate of other bombings in India have been blamed on Pakistan-based
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.
Pakistan has denied charges of training and supporting the militants.

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

Indian authorities say Harkatul was also behind the bombing of a historic
Hyderabad mosque in May that killed 11 people, although little evidence
linking the group to the blasts has been made public. But many Muslims
say Hindu extremists were to blame.

Following that attack, five people were killed in clashes between
security forces and Muslim protesters, angered by what they said was a
lack of police protection.

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