Terrorist attack in Mumbai : 63 killed, 400 injured

Mumbai : Seven blasts rocked suburban trains in Mumbai on Tuesday evening, Police Commissioner A N Roy has announced. Police control has reported 63 passengers have been killed in the blasts so far and 400 injured.   

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Witness said that one train compartment was completely blown up in the explosion, and people were carrying bodies away. The explosion went off in the men’s first class compartment on a Western Railway local, which left Churgate station in South Mumbai at 1754, as it was leaving Mahim station on track 3 at around 1820 hours.

Rescuers used bed sheets and other pieces of clothes that were on hand to remove the dead and injured from trains and platforms to nearby hospitals.

Police Commissioner A N Roy said the blasts took place at seven places and the priority was to rescued the people and rush the wounded. Limbs were strewn and blood was splattered all over the compartments where the blasts took place while all the coaches suffered excessive damage, most of them being ripped off.

Since all explosions took place when the trains were either getting into the railway stations or leaving the stations, police officials suspect that either the explosive devices were remote controlled or fitted with timer devices.

Many of the passengers from adjoining compartments, who were not injured in the blasts, sustained injuries while attempting to jump out of moving trains. The passengers themselves lent a helping hand in removing the dead and moving the injured out of the mangled train compartments and shifted them to adjoining places from where they were taken to hospitals.

Sources said it was not possible to comment on the nature of explosives used in the blasts as forensic experts and the bomb detection and disposal squads are reaching the spots to collect evidence. Ammonium nitrate, which is commonly available, had been consistenly used in previous blasts in Mumbai and looking at the nature of damage that has occurred to the railway compartments, police officials do not rule out the possibility of the use of the same chemical in today’s blasts.

Meanwhile, the Mumbai Police asked all its police stations to check each and every moving vehicle. Reserve police force was deployed at vantage points to avoid any backlash of the incidents.

Police suspect that it is a pre-planned subversive plot similar to the explosions that had rocked Mumbai in 1993, 2002 and 2003.