Hyderabad blast

19 May 2007

A twin casualty incident took place in the city of Hyderabad on 19 May 2007, when the city was struck by terrorist attack killing 11 people and 5 more were killed in police firing after attacks.

A bomb blast at a mosque in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad that left 16 dead and at least 100 injured was a planned terrorist attack. A powerful bomb exploded at the 400-year-old Medina mosque in the old quarters of the Andhra Pradesh capital during Friday prayers.

Eleven people were killed in the explosion and five in police firing on an angry mob that gathered outside the mosque after the incident, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YSR Reddy said at a joint press briefing with Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil. According to C.M. YRS Reddy 56 people were injured in the blast and compensation was announced for the injured and relatives of the dead.

Locals, angered over the explosion at one of the oldest and most revered places of worship in the city, pelted police and media personnel with stones after the blast.

A police official said the 100 or so personnel on duty at the mosque were forced to open fire after they failed to control the mob with teargas shells and baton charges.

The situation in the old quarters of Hyderabad was reported to be largely peaceful but tense Saturday with sporadic incidents of violence in some parts of the capital and other towns.

Most streets in Hyderabad wore a deserted look as people kept inside their homes following the incident and a day-long strike call given by a local Islamic organization.

The state-owned Road Transport Corporation was not operating buses as a precautionary measure. Hundreds of policemen and paramilitary personnel was deployed in sensitive areas of the city.

There were reports of demonstrations from some towns in the state with size able Muslim populations. Hindus joined Muslims in rallies to protest against the blast. Black flags could be seen on several streets in Hyderabad, where Muslims comprise about 40 per cent of the city's 4 million population.

The police found some important clues to the attack including mobile-phone SIM cards attached to the two unexploded devices found in the mosque premises soon after the blast. Both devices were defused by bomb disposal squads, averting a larger tragedy, city police chief Balwinder Singh said.

There were about 8,000 worshippers in the mosque at the time of the explosion. The recovered explosive devices contained RDX and some other highly explosive material packed in steel containers connected to mobile phones. The blast was possibly triggered by a call to a similar phone in the third device. The recovered SIM cards could provide vital leads

The Hyderabad blast comes nine months after a similar attack at a mosque in the western town of Malegaon left 37 people dead.
Indian police suspect Hindu and Muslim fundamentalist outfits of being behind the attacks on mosques and temples that are reported at regular intervals.

Security agencies said such attacks were carried out to trigger communal tension in India, which has a history of religious violence between Hindus and Muslims. These attacks were closely related to Malegaon blasts in Maharashtra as the target areas in both cases were having large Muslim population.