Ahmedabad blasts

TERRIFYING POINTERS

FIRST TIME in India that serial terror blasts have occurred on consecutive days. Both low-intensity serial blasts. Even without RDX, these bombs can be lethal as in Jaipur. These blasts are therefore seen as aimed at creating panic. In turn, this has raised anxiety over whether these 2 blasts indicate a bigger blast to come
THIRD CONSECUTIVE attack on a BJPruled state after Rajasthan, Karnataka. Experts fear Madhya Pradesh capital Bhopal may be next target. BJP has been more strident against terror and often accused Cong of being soft
FOURTH TERROR attack in which cycles have been used to plant bombs. Cycles used in Malegoan, Jaipur and the UP court serial blasts. Cycles now seem a preferred vehicle of death as they are inconspicuous
FOUR BLASTS in Maninagar, which is Narendra Modi's constituency. One blast outside Dhanvantri Hospital in Bapunagar, a cancer facility run by VHP's Praveen Togadia, himself a doctor
FIRST BLASTS take place in marketplaces. Several women killed or injured. After 40 mins of the initial blasts, fresh round of blasts took place outside hospitals, around the time the injured were being brought in for treatment

GROUP CALLING itself Indian Mujahideen sent email to media organisations taking responsibility for the blasts and setting out a political agenda, including release of alleged terrorists. The same group had sent mails before the Jaipur and UP courts blasts. These 2 mails were sent from east Delhi cyber cafes

WHAT | 17 blasts rip through city, killing 29 and injuring at least 100. Maximum number of serial blasts at one place in one day anywhere in the world

WHEN | First blast at 6.46 pm when bazaars packed and people out. Blasts continue until after 8.30 pm

WHERE | Sarkhej, Maninagar, Bapunagar diamond market, Thakkarbapanagar, Raipur, Sarangpur, Isanpur, Narol Circle, Naroda. Then blasts at the Civil Hospital, LG Hospital and Dhanvantri hospital campuses

VEHICLES OF DEATH | Most bombs planted on bicycles or packed in tiffin boxes wrapped in blue polythene bags. Quartz, microprocessers and ammonium nitrate found in blast sites like in Bangalore

Busy Hospitals, Market Places And Bus Stands Chosen As Targets By Terrorists For Deadly Strikes In Gujarat Capital
29 die as 17 blasts rip through Ahmedabad

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Ahmedabad: India appears to be one of the softest targets in the world for terrorists. On two consecutive days, they have struck in two top Indian cities—Bangalore and Ahmedabad—triggering widespread fears of more such attacks. As a sense of helplessness grips the country, security and intelligence specialists say India is increasingly being drawn into the epicentre of terror.
On Saturday evening, Ahmedabad was rocked by 17 precisely planned blasts in crowded markets, bus stands, residential areas and hospitals, leaving 29 dead (at 11 pm)
and around 100 injured, some of them seriously. The nature of the blasts were similar to those in Bangalore on Friday — quartz timer devices, microprocessors and ammonium nitrate were found at blast sites in both cities — indicating that the attacks were the handiwork of terrorists drawn from the same pool. Significantly, Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi’s constituency of Maninagar was rocked by four blasts.

The blasts which took place between 6.45 and 9.00 pm caught the police unawares even as the state was under red alert following the Bangalore blasts on. Compared to Bangalore, the Ahmedabad blasts were of higher intensity.

The last three terror attacks occurred in BJP-ruled states — Rajasthan, Karnataka and now Gujarat. Security experts warned that Bhopal in MP could be the next target. Like on the eve of the Jaipur and UP court blasts, a group calling itself Indian Mujahideen claimed responsibility for the blasts in an email.

All the blasts, except the one at Sarkhej, took place in the crowded eastern neighbourhoods of the city, within a radius of 5 km. The Civil Hospital and LG Hospital campuses were the last to get bombed, about 40 minutes after the first round of blasts.

Most of the bombs were planted behind bicycles in tiffins contained in blue polythene bags while the bombs in the hospitals were placed in automobiles. The bombs were packed with timer devices and microprocessors. Preliminary reports suggest ammonium nitrate was used in the bombs.

Eyewitnesses said multiple explosives were planted within a short range, which went off within an interval of a few seconds. The idea was to attract people to the site with the first blast and then explode the other with more devastating effect. “One bomb went off from a bag on one cycle carrier and as people collected, another one went off within 15-20 seconds on another cycle carrier’’, said Bhushan Bhatt, a municipal corporator. One of the bombs went off near a bus in a Hindu pocket of the otherwise Muslim-dominated Sarkhej ripping one side of the bus completely. The busy diamond market in Bapunagar here was also made a target. At Maninagar, the bombs were planted in busy vegetable market and bus stops.

Bomb defused in B’lore:
Police on Saturday defused a bomb that was recovered close to one of the nine places where blasts took place on Friday

Tiffin bombs: A deadly link

Koride Mahesh | TNN

Hyderabad: ‘Tiffin bombs’, which were used to deadly effect in the Ahmedabad serial blasts on Saturday, and explosives fitted to vehicles bear a similarity to the terror strikes in Andhra Pradesh.

Except in the Mecca Masjid blast of May 2007, local fundamentalist groups and Maoists have used tiffin bombs. The Hyderabad city police defused a tiffin bomb at Mecca Masjid premises after the May 18, 2007 bomb blast and was sent to the forensic science laboratory.
In Saturday’s bomb blasts in Ahmedabad, the terrorists used tiffin boxes fitted to cycles at 17 places killing scores of people.

Police officers claim local modules use tiffin bombs to create panic. They are also of low intensity unlike the large-scale destruction brought about by RDX and ammonium nitrate.
“The local modules can make tiffin boxes easily and transport them accordingly whereas RDX and other explosive material are difficult to procure,’’ an intelligence officer said.
At the Gokul Chat blasts last year, terrorists used a ‘wooden box’ shaped like a horse shoe. In the box, the jehadi groups filled ‘Neogel 90’ with iron balls and other metals to create more impact.

A couple of years ago, fundamentalist groups triggered a tiffin bomb at RTC bus complex in Karimnagar and MGM hospital in Warangal. In the Karimnagar incident, 21 people were wounded in the explosion.

The Deendar Anjuman group also allegedly used tiffin boxes to trigger blasts at various religious places between May and July 2000. The blasts occurred in Hyderabad, Medak, Ongole, Guntur and Krishna districts.

On the other hand, Maoists have been using tiffin boxes filled with explosive material as landmines for the last two decades. In the last two years, Maoists switched to rocket launchers in attacks against police personnel.

In the last two decades, police have recovered hundreds of aluminium tiffin boxes from their dumps in various districts.

The terrorist groups used cycles to trigger blasts at Malegaon, Jaipur and even in Ahmedabad blasts. But in Hyderabad Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists used a scooter to trigger a blast at Saibaba temple in Dilsukhnagar in the late 1990s.

“Terrorists use cycles as they can be parked at crowded places easily without any suspicion,’’ a senior police official said.

‘We have put police force on high alert as they can trigger blasts in any form,’’ an additional director-general of police said.