India's Delhi gradually returns to normal life after blasts

Most likely, the explosions were meant to sabotage the talks between India and Pakistan 

A little-known militant group claimed responsibility yesterday for dreadful explosions in India's capital Delhi, which killed about 60 and wounded 210 people. According to police reports, the group is in ties with a Pakistan-based terrorist organization.

Authorities said they already had gathered useful clues about the three near-simultaneous blasts Saturday night that ripped through a bus and two markets crowded before the Hindu festival of Diwali, one of the year's busiest shopping seasons.

Terrorists attack Delhi's crowded neighbourhood: Photo gallery

New Delhi's deputy police chief, Karnail Singh, said the group has ties with the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, the most feared of the dozens of Kashmiri militant groups. A leading anti-terrorism expert said the timing and nature of the blasts pointed to Lashkar.

Many were still trying to trace dead or missing relatives and friends on Monday, but the city of 14 million was slowly getting back on its feet on the eve of Diwali and a few days before Eid al-Fitr, the biggest festival on the Muslim calendar.

The blasts could be aimed at derailing a slow-moving peace process between Hindu-majority India and Islamic Pakistan, which came close to war over Kashmir in 2002, they say.

The two countries yesterday agreed to open border crossings in the disputed Himalayan region to help victims of this month's earthquake. The explosions happened just hours after the representatives of the two countries sat down to deliberate opening the heavily militarized border in disputed Kashmir to help get food, shelter and medical aid to quake victims.

No one has yet been arrested in connection with the blasts, the police official told reporters. The police announced a reward of $2,200 for any information leading to the arrests of the bombers. India faces a host of armed insurgencies: from Maoists in its forests, ethnic guerrillas in the northeast, Sikh separatists, and Islamist guerrillas fighting for Kashmir. India accuses Pakistan, its neighbor and rival, of supporting the Kashmir militants.

Source: agencies

Photos by AP