Thursday 14 July 2011
Mumbai bomb blasts
Over the years, India's commercial capital has witnessed much violence, from communal riots to gangland wars to terrorist operations. The most spectacular of the latter were the attacks of November 2008, which saw Pakistani militants from the Lashkar-e-Taiba group raid a series of targets in the city, killing more than 160 people. Two luxury hotels, a Jewish centre, a cafe and a main railway terminal were attacked.
Although they caused huge diplomatic damage, sending a promising Indian-Pakistani peace process into deep-freeze, the 2008 attacks were less murderous than the bombings of 1993. That devastating series of explosions across the city killed 250, and was blamed on a gangland don who, Indian authorities claimed, was working for Pakistan's security services. These latest blasts are clearly far from the scale of such operations.
In February last year, terrorists targeted a cafe popular with tourists in the centre of Pune. It is thought that militant groups based in Pakistan or India, or a combination of the two, were responsible.
In Delhi in October, gunmen opened fire on tourists shortly before the opening of the Commonwealth Games in Varanasi, and a bomb exploded beside worshippers along the river Ganges in the holy city. Following this attack, a home-grown militant outfit calling itself the Indian Mujahideen threatened to unleash violence. It is this organisation that was blamed for Wednesday's blasts.
This attack, like earlier smaller attacks elsewhere, seems to have been designed to inflict indiscriminate harm. The aim was probably to destabilise the security services, undermine public confidence in the government and further damage relations between India and Pakistan.
The "Indian mujahideen" is a label applied to a range of groups. There are also theories that several recent attacks originally blamed on Muslim extremists were in fact the work of Hindu radicals.
Although they caused huge diplomatic damage, sending a promising Indian-Pakistani peace process into deep-freeze, the 2008 attacks were less murderous than the bombings of 1993. That devastating series of explosions across the city killed 250, and was blamed on a gangland don who, Indian authorities claimed, was working for Pakistan's security services. These latest blasts are clearly far from the scale of such operations.
In February last year, terrorists targeted a cafe popular with tourists in the centre of Pune. It is thought that militant groups based in Pakistan or India, or a combination of the two, were responsible.
In Delhi in October, gunmen opened fire on tourists shortly before the opening of the Commonwealth Games in Varanasi, and a bomb exploded beside worshippers along the river Ganges in the holy city. Following this attack, a home-grown militant outfit calling itself the Indian Mujahideen threatened to unleash violence. It is this organisation that was blamed for Wednesday's blasts.
This attack, like earlier smaller attacks elsewhere, seems to have been designed to inflict indiscriminate harm. The aim was probably to destabilise the security services, undermine public confidence in the government and further damage relations between India and Pakistan.
The "Indian mujahideen" is a label applied to a range of groups. There are also theories that several recent attacks originally blamed on Muslim extremists were in fact the work of Hindu radicals.
