INDIA: Indian police investigating Tuesday's train blasts in western Mumbai held some 300 people for questioning in a series of raids across the scarred port city yesterday.
No formal arrests or charges have been made so far as security agencies cast about for leads on one of the country's worst terrorist strikes.
Police also released sketches of suspects as described by eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen four people carrying suspicious-looking parcels and overheard them discussing placing them aboard Mumbai's crammed local trains during the evening rush hour.
The state government also offered a reward of Rs 2.5 million (€42,560) for clues to the bombings for which the death toll yesterday rose to 200.
Another 700 were still being treated for injuries.
Officials said the majority of those detained are activists of the banned Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).
SIMI activists were allegedly responsible for bombings in Mumbai in 2003 in which 55 people died. Many members of SIMI, banned in 2001 for terrorist activities, are being tried in a special court in the city.
Meanwhile, a previously unknown group calling itself Al-Qaeda Jammu and Kashmir yesterday said it was happy about the train blasts and called for more acts of jihad.
But it did not claim responsibility for the blasts. In a telephone call to a local news agency in the northern disputed Kashmir state, it claimed that the attacks were the outcome of "Indian repression of minorities", particularly Muslims. Indian Muslims constitute 13 per cent of a population of more than a billion.
Mumbai's train bombings are also likely to impinge on continuing peace talks between India and neighbouring nuclear rival Pakistan, who have fought three wars and an 11-week border skirmish since independence in 1947.
Police and security agencies have suggested Mumbai's attack may have been executed by the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT, or Army of the Pious), a fundamentalist Islamic group operating out of Pakistan.
Banned by both countries, LeT has denied any involvement. But a senior police official said the attacks showed signs of the group's modus operandi.
India's foreign ministry further exacerbated matters by declaring that militants continue to use Pakistani soil as a springboard for attacks against India. It also called on Islamabad to live up to its 2004 pledge "to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism on the territory under its control". India has also declined to confirm dates for the scheduled foreign-secretary level talks in New Delhi, a part of the ongoing peace dialogue due to start next week.
Before the Mumbai blasts, the Pakistan foreign office had confirmed its participation in talks to assess progress made in two years of negotiations aimed at resolving various contentious issues.
These include the nearly six-decade-old Kashmir dispute, cross-border terrorism, drug trafficking, nuclear and military matters as well as trade and commerce. Bilateral dialogue has also resulted in enhanced bus and rail links and increased commerce.
Pakistan's foreign minister has reacted angrily to suggestions his country could be to blame for the bombings. Khurshid Kasuri said India should be careful about linking the attacks to militants based in Pakistan.