AT LEAST 30 people were murdered in separate terrorist attacks yesterday – one when a bomb exploded at the entrance to the India high court building in New Delhi, the other in a suicide bombing in the Pakistan city of Quetta.
Ten people died in the Delhi attack and about 60 others were injured, six of them critically, when a bomb exploded at a crowded gate leading to the court.
In Pakistan, meanwhile, the country’s Taliban claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed 20 people in Quetta. The group claimed the attack was to avenge the capture of an al-Qaeda leader. The attack targeted and wounded a brigadier of a paramilitary unit involved in Pakistan’s capture of Younis al-Mauritani and two other al-Qaeda operatives in Quetta in an operation announced on Monday. Mauritani has been described as a senior al-Qaeda leader who was plotting attacks against American and other western targets.
The White House hailed Pakistan’s capture of Mauritani as an example of counter-terrorism co-operation, suggesting Washington and Islamabad had put behind them bitterness caused by the unilateral raid that killed Bin Laden on May 2nd.
Indian security officials say they believe the Delhi attack likely involved the Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami-Bangladesh (HUJI-B), a militant group that operates out of Bangladesh and Pakistan after receiving its e-mail claiming credit for the bomb strike.
"That mail has to be looked at very seriously because HUJI-B is a very prominent terrorist group among whose targets India is one," SC Sinha, head of the National Investigation Agency inquiring into the blast, said. ( Additional reporting by Reuters)