Indian minister: Chabad House was target of attack

A bomb detonated in a crowded bakery popular with foreigners in western India killing nine people and wounding 57, officials said Sunday, the first terrorist attack in the country since the 2008 Mumbai massacre.

The blast Saturday in the city of Pune, 125 miles (200 kilometers) southeast of Mumbai, threatened to damage new efforts to reduce tensions between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan, with Hindu nationalist leaders placing blame for the attack on India's Muslim neighbor.

"It was a bomb lying in an unattended bag," Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram told reporters Sunday after visiting the bakery and the wounded in hospitals.

Home Secretary G.K. Pillai said the blast occurred at 7:30 pm at the German Bakery, near the Osho Ashram, a renowned meditation center.

Pillai said the ashram, about 200 yards (meters) from the bakery, had been surveyed by David Headley, an American facing charges in Chicago for allegedly scouting targets for the Mumbai attack.

Chidambaram told reporters Headley had also observed the Chabad Jewish center near the bakery in Pune.

"This particular area has been on the radar (of terrorists) for quite some time," Chidambaram said. "Police were sensitized that Chabad House was a target, so was the Osho Ashram."

He said one or two people acting as customers left a backpack carrying the bomb inside the bakery.

Six people died at the scene and three later succumbed to injuries at hospitals, Pillai said. Of the 57 wounded, 19 were released from medical facilities.

One foreigner among dead

Chidambaram said forensic experts were trying to determine what explosives were used and how the bomb was triggered.

"All the information available to us at the moment points to a plot to explode a device in a place that is frequented by foreigners as well as Indians," Chidambaram said.

Security forces were put on high alert Sunday at airports, train stations and markets across the country.

The bombing was the first terrorist strike in India since 10 Pakistan-based gunmen rampaged through hotels and a train station in the financial hub of Mumbai for 60 hours in November 2008, killing 166 people.

The building and nearby shops were badly damaged and splattered with thick patches of blood and several limbs. "I came running to the bakery after hearing the explosion. I found people lying all over the place," said Abba More, who lives nearby.

One foreigner was among the dead, but his nationality was not immediately known, Pillai said. Chidambaram said a Sudanese national was among the wounded in the blast.

The bombing came as ties between India and archrival Pakistan appeared to be warming. The two countries agreed to hold talks in New Delhi on February 25, their first formal negotiations since the Mumbai attacks.

Asked whether the explosion was linked to the India-Pakistan talks, Pillai said: "Forensic investigations have just begun. Till they are completed, we will not know who is (involved)."

But Gopinath Munde, a senior Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party leader, asserted, "This again is an attack from Pakistan."