The bombings, which shook three separate neighborhoods within minutes of each other during Wednesday’s busy evening rush hour, were the country’s worst terror strike since the siege of Mumbai that killed 166 people 31 months ago.
Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said Indian intelligence had received no warning before the latest blasts of a possible attack on Mumbai.
“Whoever has perpetrated this attack has worked in a very, very clandestine manner,” he said at a news conference after an emergency security meeting.
He said police were looking into “every possible hostile group” in their search for the culprits.
That did little to reassure residents who questioned how the attack could happen despite massive security measures taken in recent years.
“After the 2008 blast and all the media hype (about safety), we thought we were safe,” said Anita Ramaswami, a 33-year-old accountant. “But things still are the same and people in Mumbai continue to feel vulnerable.”
No one has claimed responsibility for the bombing and Indian officials have so far refused to speculate on who might be behind the attack.
“We are not pointing a finger at this stage,” Chidambaram said. “We have to look at every possible hostile group and find out whether they are behind the blast.”
Indian officials have accused Pakistan’s powerful spy agency of helping coordinate and fund earlier attacks, including the 2008 Mumbai siege, which lasted three days. Peace talks between the countries were suspended after that attack and resumed only recently.
Asked whether the blasts might have been aimed at derailing a new round of peace talks expected in a few days, Chidambaram said: “We are ruling out no hypothesis.”
Top Indian officials said the government had done a huge amount to try to keep the country safe since the 2008 Mumbai attacks, but it was unable to provide airtight security.
“It’s very difficult to stop every single terror attack. The steps taken by our government over the last couple of years are quite profound steps,” said Rahul Gandhi, a senior leader of the ruling Congress Party.
Chidambaram called for patience.
“We live in the most troubled neighborhood in the world,” he said. “Pakistan-Afghanistan is the epicenter of terror ... living in the most troubled neighborhood, every part of India is vulnerable.”
Pakistan’s government expressed distress about the loss of lives and injuries soon after the blasts were reported.
A steady drizzle Thursday washed away bloodstains and threatened evidence at the site of the attacks, which ripped off storefronts, shredded a bus stop and left bodies strewn in the dirt of Mumbai’s crowded neighborhoods and market. Investigators covered the blast sites with plastic sheets to protect the evidence.
The bomb in the Dadar area in central Mumbai was placed on a bus shelter; in the Opera House business district in southern Mumbai it was hidden under some garbage on the road; in the Jhaveri Bazaar jewelry market a few miles (kilometers) away it was hidden under an umbrella, near a motorcycle, officials said.
All three were improvised explosive devices made of ammonium nitrate with electric detonators, authorities said.
“The IEDs were not crude and showed some amount of sophistication and training,” said R.K. Singh, India’s home secretary.
Surveillance cameras were in place at all three blast sites, Chidambaram said, but he did not reveal if any information was gleaned from them.
Meanwhile, families raced to find word about their relatives.
One man described hunting for information about his brother, who was in the jewelry market when the bomb went off.
“We are in that market every day from morning to night,” he told NDTV news channel, as he held back tears. “We went from hospital to hospital and finally found his body in the morgue.”
Kaushik Adhikari, 18, said his father, a goldsmith, was wounded in the same blast.
“He was hit by a shrapnel in the stomach and operated on. Doctors say he is stable,” he said. “This has come as a big shock. We realize how uncertain life has become.”
Chidambaram lowered the casualty toll to 17 confirmed deaths. He said a severed head was found that could be an 18th casualty. He did not explain the discrepancy from an earlier government statement that listed 21 deaths. Additionally, 131 were injured, 23 of them seriously.
The blasts marked the first major attack on Mumbai since 10 militants laid siege to the city for 60 hours in November 2008. That attack targeted two luxury hotels, a Jewish center and a busy train station.
