Scores killed in India train fire
Two bombs explode; more unexploded devices found at scene


NEW DELHI - Two homemade bombs exploded aboard a train bound from India to Pakistan burning to death at least 64 passengers on Monday in what the Indian government called “an act of terror.”

Most of the victims were Pakistanis but included some Indians, officials said, who described the attack as 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.

Television pictures showed one 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.

‘The last journey’
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.

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 burnt 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.

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 came days before Pakistani Foreign Minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri was 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.”

“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 also happened just days before 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.

The Samjhauta Express was carrying around 527 passengers. The dead included three railway policemen.

‘Anguish and grief’
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 started up again in 2004.

While a hardline Hindu group threatened to disrupt the service in 2000, suspicion for this attack is 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.

Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17220957/

this terrible. I didn't know there rail lines connect India to Pakistan.

^Ditto

A sad event, but I'm glad to see the united front that has been shown between the Indian and Pakistani governments.

Update: Still no suspects in the bombing.

^It'd be an update if something new happened...
That's not an update

I'm trying to keep this thread afloat, as its an important news story.

As far as I remember this is the first time so many pakistanis get killed in a terrorist bombing inside India. The pakistani authorities are very uncooperative in their approach on this episode. They are not helping indian authorities with the investigation. The last time i heard the news pakistanis even removed some of their critically wounded people and boarded them to aeroplanes against doctors' advice. I was wondering why they were in such a hurry to remove pakistani wounded from indian hospitals. Very unfortunate so many innocent people died.

NOTE - Moderator please this topic should also go in the "India Serious Talk". The topic starter should be well aware to start these kinds of topics in serious talk forum.

The US and Britain and helping the terrorist nation of Pakistan coordinate these attacks.

The Pakistani government has already made it clear it doesn't support terrorism. Just because a country has a few terrorist groups, that doesn't mean the government supports it.

Pakistan has more than "a few" terrorist groups operating on its land. The Pakistani government did support a number of terrorist groups (such as Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad) but was esentially forced to drop support if them by the US Government (who listed both as registered terrorist groups). While the current governement may not be directly supporting the groups, they are appeasing them (at the threat of being ousted)....