Indian authorities suspect Islamist groups were behind coordinated bomb blasts in the troubled state of Assam that killed 76 people and wounded more than 320, police said today.
Separatist movements have riddled India's remote northeast for decades, but the level of sophistication and precision of yesterday's bombings echo similar blasts across India over the past year which have been blamed on Islamist groups.
Bangladesh-based Harkat-ul-Jihad al Islami (HuJI) is the main suspect in yesterday's attack. Police say the Islamist group could have sought to avenge attacks on Muslim settlers by indigenous tribes that killed at least 47 people last month.
"Our initial investigation points that these attacks were carried out by jihadi forces with the help of local militant groups," Khagen Sharma, inspector general of police in Assam and chief Assam's intelligence services, told Reuters.
The separatist United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) was also suspected, but police and security experts say the group may have only played a supporting or logistical roles. ULFA has denied any involvement.
Assam is one of seven states in the remote northeast racked by insurgency, connected to India by a thin strip of land and surrounded by Bangladesh, China, Myanmar and Bhutan.
Over the years Muslim settlers, mostly from Bangladesh, have moved to this Hindu and tribal-dominated region, leading to increased ethnic tensions that could have played into the hands of Islamists.
Analysts say plastic explosives were used in the blast to cause maximum damage and were remotely detonated within five minutes of each other using timer devices - hallmarks of strikes by suspected Islamist groups in India.
"HuJI has actually been fingered by Assam police as being involved in the attack, an accusation substantiated by the discovery of RDX (plastic) explosives," US private intelligence firm Stratfor said in a report.
Indian home ministry officials said today they had warned the Assam government of a possible militant strike after Indian authorities intercepted a telephone conversation between Pakistan and HUJI operatives in Bangladesh referring to Assam.
"The Islamic groups from Bangladesh were using the state as a transit route to move in the rest of the country," Sharma said.
"Their activities in Assam were confined to supplying weapons and explosives, but they have become more active in Assam recently," he said.
The bombings in Assam have underscored the fragile nature of India's internal security, security analysts say.
"At the moment, we don't have a long-term strategy, things look really bad," security analyst C Uday Bhaskar told Reuters in New Delhi.
A wave of bomb attacks has hit India in recent months, killing more than 125 people. Police have blamed most of those attacks on Islamist militants, although Hindu militants have also been suspected of carrying out several attacks.
Reuters