Tuesday, May 13, 2008 - 18:30
AFP News Briefs ListIndia tourist city blasts kill up to 35: report
A series of bomb blasts tore through crowded markets in the northwestern Indian tourist city of Jaipur on Tuesday, killing up to 35 people and injuring many, police and news reports said.
Police said at least five bombs hit markets in Jaipur, the capital of the western desert state of Rajasthan, and put their initial estimate of the toll at six.
"It's a terror attack," police director general Amorjot Singh Gill said.
"Early reports suggest six people are killed and 30 have been injured," he told reporters.
The NDTV station however put the toll at 35 people dead, citing police, but that could not be independently confirmed.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh condemned the blasts and appealed for calm.
Scores of people were taken to hospital in Jaipur, some 260 kilometres (160 miles) from New Delhi.
One of the blasts took place near a temple, where cycles and rickshaws lay in a mangled heap, television pictures showed.
Historic Jaipur, which has a population of more than two million, is one of India's top tourist resorts and a favourite for foreigners.
It is popularly known as the 'pink city' because of the ochre-pink hue of its old buildings and crenellated city walls.
India has been plagued by bombings across the country in recent years and routinely points the finger at foreign-based Islamic militant groups fighting its rule in the Himalayan state of Kashmir.
Within just the last year they have included bombings in the southern city of Hyderabad which killed 43 people, at a cinema in Punjab state in northern India which left six dead, and a series of explosions outside courts in three northern cities that killed 13.
Images
TV grab shows one of the sites of a series of bomb blasts which tore through Jaipur. A series of bomb blasts tore through crowded markets in the northwestern Indian tourist city of Jaipur, killing up to 35 people.
© 2007 AFP
