Twin bombs kill 14, wound over 100 in India

PanARMENIAN.Net - A day after two bicycle bombs killed 14 people and wounded more than 100, investigators into India's worst bombing in more than a year searched for possible links to anger over the execution of a Muslim militant, The Associated Press reports.

The bombs exploded minutes apart late Thursday, Feb 21, in a crowded shopping area in the southern city of Hyderabad — one of them near a cinema and one near a bus station. The blasts shattered storefronts, scattered food and plates from roadside restaurants and left tangles of dead bodies. Passersby rushed the wounded to hospitals.

Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said there was a general alert about the possibility of an attack somewhere in India for the past three days. "But there was no specific intelligence about a particular place," he said.

The bombs were attached to two bicycles about 150 meters (500 feet) apart in Hyderabad's Dilsukh Nagar district, Shinde told reporters in New Delhi. He said 14 people died and 119 others were injured, six of them critically.

Top state police officer V. Dinesh Reddy said improvised explosive devices with nitrogen compound were used in the blasts.

The explosions were the first major bomb attack to hit India since a September 2011 blast outside the High Court in New Delhi killed 13 people. The government has been heavily criticized for its failure to arrest the masterminds behind previous bombings.