Strike called in Hyderabad after bomb carnage

HYDERABAD: A strike called by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) kept many people off work and shut schools on Monday after twin bomb blasts blamed on Islamic militants killed 42 civilians in Hyderabad.

BJP accused the government of security lapses that led to the devastating Saturday night bombings here, after 11 people had died in a similar blast at a Hyderabad mosque in May.

It called the strike in protest over the explosions, which ripped through a packed street eatery in the city and an amusement park where hundreds of people were watching a sound and light show.

"We have been constantly warning the Centre that it should take adequate measures to strengthen internal security, but the Congress-led government has never bothered to rein in terror," said senior BJP leader Vijay Kumar Malhotra.

He accused the ruling coalition of a "soft approach on terrorism."

Hyderabad was reported to be quiet on Monday morning.

State-run and private schools declared a holiday after the BJP called the stoppage across Andhra Pradesh state.

However, thousands of Hindu weddings took place as planned on Sunday, local priests said.

Meanwhile, forensic experts were on Monday studying the material used in the bombs, which were set off by timers and left more than 50 wounded.

"Yes, it is a timer-based explosive and one bomb that we defused, it also had a quartz clock timer," investigating officer Ram Mohan told a local TV channel.

Police also recovered and defused one unexploded bomb from a cinema hall a few hours after the twin blasts.

Initial reports said police recovered several more unexploded bombs across the city, but this was later denied.

Investigators immediately said they suspected Islamic militants of the attack.

The state's chief minister, YS Rajshekhar Reddy, said that "available information" pointed to the involvement of terrorist organisations based in neighbouring Pakistan and Bangladesh.

He rejected any intelligence failure on the part of his government.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks and no arrests have been made, but reports claim the main suspects were the Bangladesh-based militant outfit Harkatul Jihad Al-Islami.

Security services had intelligence reports five months ago warning about extremists preparing for bombings in Hyderabad, a newspaper report on Monday.

Some eight kilos of military-grade explosives had been delivered to a Harkatul cell, the report said quoting unnamed sources, noting police had failed to establish the targets or identities of the operatives.

The Union home minister Shivraj Patil said the government had "bits of information" before Saturday that an attack was being planned but did not know a "time and place."

He declined to blame Islamic militants.