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Sixteen bombs hit India's Ahmedabad, 29 killed

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-07-27 08:43

AHMEDABAD - At least 16 small bombs exploded in the Indian city of Ahmedabad on Saturday, killing at least 29 people and wounding 88, a day after another set of blasts in the country's IT hub, officials said.

Yash Vyas, 6, lies on a bed in a ward of the Civil Hospital in Ahmadabad, India, late Saturday, July 26, 2008. Yash lost his father Dushyant Vyas and his brother Rohan was injured in Saturday's blasts. At least 29 people were killed and 88 wounded when a series of small explosions hit the western city on Saturday, a top official said. [Agencies]

On Friday, eight bombs exploded in quick succession in the southern information technology city of Bangalore, killing at least one person and wounding six others.

Saturday's blasts were in Ahmedabad's crowded old city dominated by its Muslim community. One was in a metal tiffin box, used to carry food, another apparently left on a bicycle.

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"The blasts occurred in 90 minutes, one in a hospital, others in the old city of Ahmedabad," Narendra Modi, the state's Hindu-nationalist chief minister told reporters.

There were two separate series of bombings, the first near busy market places. A second quick succession of bombs went off 20 to 25 minutes later around a hospital, where at least six people died, police said.

Several TV channels said they had received an email from a group called the "Indian Mujahideen" at the time of the blasts. The same group claimed responsibility for eight bombs that killed 63 people in the western city of Jaipur in May.

One television channel showed a bus with its side blown up, shattered windows and the roof half-destroyed. Another showed a dead dog lying beside a blown-up bicycle.

"The bus had just started when the blast happened," P. K Pathak, a retired insurance official who was traveling in nearby bus, told Reuters.

"Many people standing on the exit door fell down. There was fire and smoke all over. We got down from our bus and rushed to help them."

Ahmedabad is the main city in the communally sensitive and relatively wealthy western state of Gujarat, scene of deadly riots in 2002 in which 2,500 people are thought to have died, most of them Muslims killed by rampaging Hindu mobs.

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