This just in…five bombs went off in New Delhi today, at approximately 6pm.
India’s capital New Delhi was rocked by blasts in three busy market areas, killing at least 18 people, the worst bomb attack in the country since 50 people were killed in the city of Ahmedabad in July. …Home Minister Shivraj Patil, who said five blasts took place within 45 minutes starting at about 6 p.m., condemned the attacks in a televised statement in the capital. …As many as 50 were injured in the blasts, Delhi Police chief Y.S. Dadwal told reporters at one of the bomb sites. Some television channels put the toll as high as 20 and the number of those injured at 92. [Bloomberg]
Other media outlets are reporting up to fourteen have died from the blast. I’m sure this number will change throughout the course of the day once the facts are sorted out.
Two of today’s blasts took place in the central Connaught Place area and two at a market in the upscale Greater Kailash area, Dadwal said. One blast took place at Ghaffar Market in the Karol Bagh area, he said. [Bloomberg]
With Diwali right around the corner, and in the midst of Ramadan, I’m sure the markets were crowded with people preparing for festivities. It feels like an overwhelming 24 hours of tragedy – between these bombings, Hurricane Ike, and here in Southern California a tragic head on train collision.
I hope all of our readers and family are safe – whether in New Delhi, Houston or LA. If you are in New Delhi, please keep us posted!
UPDATE: The death toll is up to 30, with at least 90 people injured.
The Indian Mujahideen, regarded by security agencies as a front of the Lashkar-Huji terror machine, has claimed responsibility for the blasts… This group had sent emails before the UP court blasts, the Jaipur and Ahmedabad blasts. This time, too, it sent an email to media groups, however, 10 minutes after the first blast. [TimesofIndia]
To keep following the latest, there’s been a pretty well-linked wiki page set up on the Delhi bombings.
And again… the toothless Indian government will not be able to do anything.
1 · Nara said
Toothless Indian government should invade Pakistan I guess? Lets kill more ppl!
Was safely getting ready for dinner when this happened, but had been at CP earlier in the day for lunch. In a psychic moment I chose to comment to my wife on the dilapidated Regal cinema (that it “doesn’t look so Regal anymore”), and my wife commented on a half-melted dustbin (“why do people always set those on fire?”). Six hours later, 2 bombs were place in the Regal cinema and 3 in dustbins around Central Park in CP. Only one of those, in Central Park, went off.
3 observations about NDTV news coverage: 1. Why the obsession with Indian politicians at the earliest possible moment saying that the families will be compensated? This happens all the time in blasts, even while they are still sending the people to the hospital.
Indian new channels like to show the same film clips over and over and over, whether it is cricket or someone VIP going to court, but why did they have to show the bloody victims over and over? After showing the same clip about 30 times, they started to blur their faces in subsequent repeated showings, sometimes. One poor guy was followed by a camera right into the car where they proceeded to remove his pants to deal with injuries–completely disgusting and disrespectful. Similarly with the 12 year old balloon seller who apparently witnessed a bomb going in a dustbin. They showed his face, then the decided they should blur it later on, lest the “Indian Mujahadeen” find him. Don’t they have policy on this?
Barka Dutt is way better then any other TV journalist in India.
Seriously?
How long before news stories will read…
“Mumbai not blasted today” with the bi-line “We have confirmed reports that Mumbai was not hit with serial blasts during rush hour today, citizens were able to get to and from work without fear of having their brains splattered all over the street…”
1 Nara said
Well at least the government can try to preempt these attacks and bring the culprits to book before they can carry out such heinous crimes…and give them exemplary punishment ! This is happening again and again… and not doing anything is not acceptable !!
Sorry, I was replying to Suede and not Nara. Apologies.
I think this is due to the lack of social safety net. So in case where a sole breadwinner of the family is killed in a terrorist attack, the family’s first concern is probably over how will they feed themselves now, and not will the terrorists get caught or prosecuted or not. Terrorism will keep on happening in India and getting actual convictions in these cases is next to impossible, as noted by WSJ article today.
The 1993 Bombay stock market blast (India’s 9/11 … or one of the 9/11’s, anyway) guilty were convicted in 2007 (after 14 years) and the convictions were achieved for the minor actors such as an inspector who took a bribe and let a consignment of RDX enter the state. All the key masterminds are still at large.
Oh, this is terrible news.
*Is this happening with increasing frequency or does it just seem that way? Troubling.
**My prayers and sympathies to those whose loved ones may have been injured, or worse. I am so sorry.
the first and most significant step in preventing such attacks is to throwout the congress upa govt it is not a coincidence that these attacks are happening under their watch congress openly supports hardline islamic orgs just to get votes – this does not even include their appeasement of naxalites and ULFA its sad that these assholes are in power in india and its even sadder that assholes continue to support them
My thoughts and prayers are with everyone affected, whether by Ike, the train collision in my home state or this tragedy in Delhi. You are right, Taz; it has been a sad 24 hours.
I don’t usually comment on Bollywood movies but I wonder if you have seen Dhaoka.
http://www.apunkachoice.com/scoop/bollywood/20070901-3.html
The movie seemed to justify terrorism. It portrayed the terrorists as acting out of some personal extreme injustice done to them by the Indian Government.
The female suicide bomber had been raped by Indian Police Officers after they killed her father. The other terrorist in the movie was her brother.
I am certainly not saying that people don’t suffer such extreme personal injustices but I do believe that it doesn’t really reflect the profile of most terrorists.
If the villains who did this bombing are caught I am almost positive that you would not find any extreme injustice in their background. Sure they would feel some general sense of “injustice†done to “their people†but as for something personal happening to them or a family member like in Dhoka, you most likely will not find that. That has been the case in Israel with the suicide bombers there. Usually there was no personal injustice done to them except for a more general sense of victimhood. It wasn’t because the bomber was raped or father killed or child was killed, etc, etc.
What bothers me is as long as terrorists are falsely portrayed as victims as they were in this movie, Indians will not have the necessary focus needed to defeat this evil.
was at a bar in Priya (vasank lok) when the police bust in and emptied the bar and then the entire shopping district, the movie theatres were emptied too nd all the shops shut in less than 30 mins (even the paan and smoke shops!). I have no love for the dilli puleece but gotta give ’em props for last nights work.
2 • suede said
What is this a pre-emptive defense? Did anyone utter ‘Pakistan’ here?
Would it be so bad if supporters, planners and perpetrators of such acts are killed? Or do you think we should ‘rehabilitate’ misguided youth once they are tired killing a few dozen innocent people?
This is sad. but seriously, its been so repetitive even people thousands of miles away have started to get numb to it.
SM, you should have a one touch hot key for “ got blasted”, and drop down menu for major Indian cities.
13 · Sulabh said
My comment was meant as a sarcastic remark on the person calling the Indian government “Toothless”; a government which, unlike other well-toothed governments, does not go invade countries in pre-emptive defense. For all we know, this was just something planted by the opposition party to shake the current government and put them in bad light.
No, it would not be bad if supporters/planners/perpetrators of such acts are “brought to justice”. But should we kill them? on stakes?
Violence as a response to violence is uncivilized.
I don’t think anyone here is suggesting that Pakistan should be attacked. I’ve always found it odd that people think such activities could not be conceived/planned entirely in India. It’s laziness to just always say “ISI did it” even though I know this kind of atrocity puts them in the mithai distributing mood.
as usual, the US will do the actual work to help clean up this mess. Bush is going in to Pakistan. In typical US fashion this is almost too late, but the job will get done. Connections to the Indian Muj will be found and Indians will be safer. Over time. Just let the US do the job. nobody else will.
Yeah, right.. People with the same ideology attack targets in Pakistan. Does that mean, Indian opposition party (read the evil “Hindutvadis”) are planting bombs in Pakistan too?.
How many comments before this the comments are closed?
15 · suede said
Be it the BJP or Congress, neither has planned or executed a terrorist attack. You can hate the BJP, but they arent terrorists hell bent on attacking innocent Indians at random times.
17 · Ram Rahman said
The US govt was OK with overlooking Pak ISI activities against India pre-9/11, they are not doing this for India. It is in part their mess as it was funded with Afghan war petty cash so they should be expected to clean it up
That’s right. The same folks were “freedom loving jihadis” for the US when they were fighting the Soviet Union but now the dreaded terrorists. Anyways, I appreciate the Pakistani military for getting money in both cases. They are milking the US dollars, Of late Bush is showing signs of getting fed up by Pakistani double crossing techniques.
20 · anthroguy said
I would not put it past these political parties to create a little chaos just to make the ruling coalition look irresponsible and to create ill-will against them. Politics is a dirty game, worldwide. There have been things that Shiv Sena has done, and there have been things that BJP has done (Babri Masjid), and the Gujrat Massacres etc.
23 · suede said
The Sena and Bajrang Dal are violent, but this is not their method of violence. Theirs is to run riot hacking & burning through minority quarters, not execute bombings that take careful planning.
My quote above begins with “The Sena and Bajrang Dal”
I agree with the sentiment that the US was against these same terrorists before it was against them similar to India in its relationship with the LTTE. The difference here is, if the US does not go all out agaisnt then in Afghan/Pak, another terrorist attack will occur in the west. I really see nothing other than open US attacks against terror groups/ training camps on Pakistani soil be it Obama or McCain as the next president. Its the only natural progression on the war on terror and unlike Iraq, it makes sense.
“Toothless Indian government should invade Pakistan I guess? Lets kill more ppl!
india cannot invade pakistan. not unless they become a majority christian nation, then they can invade the F%$& out off any muslim nation, and nobody will object. heck, look at america. ahey kill almost a million Iraqis, kill thousands of innocent afghan women, children and men every day, not to mention pakistani citizens, and how has america been punished?
i am not kidding, take a look: indians living in the united states demanded that, the american state department cancel narendra modi’s visa because of his, alleged, complicity in the death of a thousand gujarati muslims. and who do these concerned indian intellectuals appeal to for the cancellation? to the very administration, which has killed almost a million muslims, and counting everyday, since 2001. why didn’t we demand that the indian government cancel the visas of rice, armitage, rumsfeld and bush?
While I try to get over the staggering pointlessness of the poster right before me, I would like to point out that pointing fingers at Pakistan and its fledgling Democracy, at this point…would be political suicide.
Maybe someone will rethink the lifting of SIMI’s status as a terrorist organization.
And, I think in the Indian context, we might have our own Goodwinning with a reference to Gujrat
Bruce Schneier’s blog has many great pieces on cost benefit analysis of security against terrorism: http://www.google.com/search?domains=www.schneier.com&q=terror&sitesearch=www.schneier.com%2Fblog
The basic point is that for a country the size of India, it is impossible to prevent all terrorist measures without sacrificing nearly all our civil liberties. There are methods which will reduce the number of attacks with less cost but not completely eliminate them. Keeping this fact, that s a defensive mindset against terrorism will not be completely effective, we need to adopt an offensive position. The Indian government needs to:
Train operatives and saboteurs and infiltrate them in Pakistan. They will carry out targeted assasinations against high value targets like ISI operatives, high ranking members of fundamentalist Islamic parties and known terrorist organisations. Don’t target moderates (until they turn extremist). Think Maulana Fazal-ur-Rehman and not Zardari. With the kind of internecine warfare going on in Pakistan pinpointing blame would be very difficult.
As much as possible don’t target innocents. However in retaliation operatives may be permitted to attack public places during moment of high population density (e.g. friday prayers in a mosque). Don’t retaliate immediately after a provocation in India, otherwise the link may be established. Wait for a while for tempers to cool down and then strike. Like above there are enough parties to be plausible blamed.
Plausible deniability must be maintained.
The problem with India has been that we have not had a credible offensive intelligence activity ever. The policy of Ahimsa and Non-Alignment has emasculated us. It is time to take the fight to the opponent’s half.
An addition to my comment above at #29
If only Kissinger was Indian.
Only a few weeks ago (and a month before that, book-ending my stay in the mountains)I was staying with my grandfather in GK Part I, C-Block, which is right next to the M-Block market, where apparently there was a bomb – right outside of the lone Internet place. It is freaky to think that this happened in an area I visited almost daily for that, in total, week and a half or so; one of the few areas in Delhi I know like the back of my hand, having visited it so frequently throughout my childhood – and one that is changing from, to my (ultimately) Western eyes, quaint to indistinguishably global.
I suppose my grandfather’s relative confinement to the house these days – he is 93 – helped in this case, since there was little chance he would have been affected but even in his deafness could likely hear the blasts. Incidentally, and quite eerily, my aunt was driving between the M-Block market and some Metro station, I forget in which order, passing each perhaps minutes before bombs went off. She arrived home safely, quite shaken, and rang my grandfather to let him know that she was physically alright and escaped in what could have been the nick of time; my grandfather quickly changed the subject to his recent laxative overdose, apparently of greater concern to him. (Hopefully that anecdote’s worth a smile.)
To echo a common sentiment, my heart goes out to the family and friends, and of course the shaken and scarred survivors, of these recent tragedies.
Minor Point – these were areas of CP, GK and Karol Bagh. They are always very crowded, especially on a weekend afternoon/evening and anyone planning such an attack would not have to worry about the lack of crowds – festival season or not. Its a little early for Diwali shoppers anyways. Am not sure how much Ramadan would affect afternoon shopping, especially in these areas.
31 · HitlerWasACommunityOrganizer said
Sarah Palin, is that you ?
What parties might these be ? Congress is the leader of the coalition. The BJP is the ruling party in Gujrat where identical blasts happened a short while ago. The Socialists are now in bed with Congress. Hmmm… the Communists perhaps ?
India has played a nefarious role in arming, training and funding terror groups in neighbouring countries, so I see the “we are the poor innocent victims” claim to be quite hypocritical. These types of bomb attacks are absolutely reprehensible, but the pain felt by Indians is the same pain felt by non-Indians. Indian money has gone into funding bomb attacks (through aid for militant groups) in neighbouring countries and the government and its intelligence services (ie RAW) need to be held accountable for doing that. I would have though a responsible democracy doesn’t arm, train, or fund things like HitlerWasACommunityOrganizer is advocating. But then again the USA has a long history of arming, funding and training various terror groups and trumpets itself as the “beacon of democracy” – just like India trumpets itself as the “world’s largest democracy.”
37 · Reg said
So how would you like a responsible democracy to respond to terrorist attacks against its citizens on its soil?
We condemn this inhuman and barbaric blast…
37 · Reg said
Yes, India not only arms militants everywhere it also slanders people through its cronies
Please do not bring in the same insipid arguments that the Pro-Palestine crowd makes about how the Israelis (in this case, my parent’s countrymen)deserve this. Your statement cannot have stank of more insensitivity at a more inopportune moment.
23 suede said
Your insensitivity and propaganda-ism are showing.
And before you draw such conclusions, please be sure to check out the news on this.
” Bhagat said police have not made any arrests in the attack, for which the Muslim militant group Indian Mujahedeen took responsibility.
Five minutes before the first blast, CNN-IBN — CNN’s sister network in India — received an E-mail from the group warning of an impending strike.” — CNN.
HitlerWasACommunityOrganizer:
There were more suicide blasts in Pakistan than in India over the last year. It is easy to blame Pakistani ISI than to hide the incompetency of the Indian intelligence.
The same ideology is exploding bombs in Pakistan and in India. Instead of attacking Pakistan, Indian intelligence should do well to infiltrate the home grown terrorists.
41 · MiraD said
I said that before I read the [updated] post. Sorry, no propaganda-isms here. Just keeping an open mind. And with regards to insensitivity, go read all my posts in this thread, starting from the first one.
23 · suede said
Suede’s argument:
Party in power: Congress or (whicihever one he likes) Terrorism perpetrators: BJP/Shiv Sena/Hindus Rationale: To make the ruling party look bad
Party in power: BJP/Shiv Sena Terrorism perpetrators: BJP/Shiv Sena/Hindus Rationale: To obtain an excuse to blame Muslims for anti national activity
Attaboy Suede.
yeah.. look at the irony. But I think you are comparing different entities. People who argued for revoking Modi’s visa are the residents of America. The real analogy is that they should ask for revoking the citizenship of Bush/Cheney/Rice for the alleged complicity in the death of a million Iraqi Muslims. The reason why they didn’t ask for that is clear, their green cards / visas/ residency status in US would be revoked before Bush’s citizenship gets revoked.
42 · Ponniyin Selvan said
I agree with you Ponniyin. We should be on the offensive on both fronts, infiltrate the terrorist organizations and carry out retributive assasinations on high value targets in Pakistan
BJP lost my respect the day Advani led his party on the RJB/Babri masjid massacre. In my life, if there’s one moment that I’ve been ashamed of being a hindu, then that would be it. And now, Modi is taking over the reins from Advani, and coincidentally, the morning of the blasts, he predicted them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcyHcvix0MI
The wiki page says the email, taking responsibility for this, came from “al_arbi_delhi@yahoo.com”. It shouldn’t be too hard to trace the ip.
and then there’s more religious BJP propaganda online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggX-L7fNK-M (check out the poster’s saffron profile-page too)
makes me sick.
47 · suede said
So why have you chosen to remain a hindu?
So if person A warns a group of people that something bad is going to happen to them, and this bad thing happens then Person A is to blame for for it, since he is the culprit. 2 + 2 = Hoggs boson.
Big help. Its probably from a cyber cafe. IPs can be spoofed. Open proxies.
Just the religious BJP propaganda or all fundamentalist religious propaganda?
suede:
It is ok to doubt the commonly held beliefs and think through different angles. But the same group that blasted Delhi targeted Ahmedabad and poked holes in the “Modi machismo” that Islamic terrorists cannot attack the Hindu Samrat Modi’s rule. If you read the latest email sent by Indian Mujahideen (whose IP has been found to be another case of hacking into unsecure wireless networks in Mumbai), it claims RSS/VHP are involved in bomb attacks and not interrogated by police. Unless they are hitting self goals, if the blasts are done by Hindutvadis they won’t drag their names into limelight.
It is hard to believe these blasts are carried out by either of the political parties or their affiliates. If you think about it, Pakistan is attacked by similar groups over the last year or so even more brutally. Definitely I think you won’t blame BJP/RSS/VHP for those attacks (unless you are of the types who believe 9/11 is an inside job by Bush/Cheney)
So why have you chosen to remain a hindu?
Perhaps because once you’re born a Hindu, you always remain one? Even atheists are a part of the canon. It is kind of like the Borg – you are assimilated and you can never completely undo that. As Picard can testify…
Perhaps because the commentor doesn’t wish to leave the Hindutva nutcases as the sole proprietors and definers of the Sanatan Dharma?
All religious fundamentalist propaganda is sickening. But it is more personal when someone is trying to foul your house. As simple as that really.
44 · HitlerWasACommunityOrganizer said
No kidding.
sude and his types as well as the ‘root cause of terrorism’ types get a lot of traction on this blog. If one maps ‘handles’ <-> ‘comments’ <-> ‘issue’, it is easy to identify patterns, a bot could be posting many of these comments.
Screw this, lets get back to the important issues guys – Was Abhi able to flush this morning ?
No 🙂