Indian police detain suspects in Mumbai blasts

The attacks wounded more than 700 people. Picture / Reuters

MUMBAI - Police in India have detained about 20 people in connection with the Mumbai bombings in which 186 people died, the city's police chief has said.

"We have questioned 250 to 300 people as part of the investigations in two days," said A N Roy. "Around 20 people have been detained at various places." Television said many people were picked up from hotels and guest houses in the city.

Bomb experts were still picking through the mangled wreckage for clues, but a senior Mumbai police officer said electrical timers could have been used to set off the explosions.

"We can be sure only after the forensic and ballistic results, but so far it looks like crude electrical timers were used," the officer said.

Indian TV channels, citing home ministry sources, said the attacks were jointly carried out by the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group and the Students' Islamic Movement of India, banned in 2001 for allegedly trying to stir religious unrest over the US-led war on terror.

Lashkar has denied any role in what it called "inhuman and barbaric acts". The home ministry was tightlipped.

"We have nothing on this right now," Junior Home Minister Sri Prakash Jaiswal said.

Lashkar is believed by authorities to be behind blasts in New Delhi in October that killed more than 60 people.

On Thursday, four young men were handed over to police by a crowd at a Mumbai railway station for behaving suspiciously. Police said the men tried to throw away their bags when confronted by passengers and were still being questioned.

Tuesday's attacks (1.54am Wednesday NZT)on crowded evening rush-hour trains and stations in just 11 minutes also wounded more than 700 people. But the city responded by attending work and schools on Wednesday and maintaining peace between Hindus and Muslims.

Mumbai's commuters were back on the city's packed public transport in their millions, but remained uneasy.

A Reuters witness travelling on the city's suburban trains saw commuters checking under seats and keeping an eye on bags and luggage and even asking passengers to identify their baggage.

"Suspect everyone and look for a potential bomber," Diwakar, a 47-year-old lawyer, told fellow passengers on a train to downtown Mumbai on Thursday.

Relatives and friends of some victims were still trying to identify mutilated bodies by personal belongings such as bloodied clothes, credit cards and mobile phones.

Police said 158 of the 186 dead had been identified.

The toll was the worst since a series of bombs killed more than 250 people in Mumbai in 1993. Tuesday's attacks were also eerily reminiscent of serial bomb blasts on commuter rail networks in Madrid and London in the past two years.

The media asked India to step up pressure on Pakistan, which India accuses of supporting militants.

"There is a need to tell our friends in the war against terror that something needs to be done urgently about the jihad factory next door," The Hindustan Times said.

In continued violence in Indian Kashmir, four Hindus were gunned down by suspected Muslim militants late on Wednesday.

- REUTERS