PUNE, India (Reuters) – A bomb ripped through a packed restaurant in the Indian city of Pune on Saturday, killing at least eight people including four foreign women in the country’s first big attack since the 2008 Mumbai massacre.
The explosion comes only a day after India and Pakistan agreed to meet for high-level talks in New Delhi on February 25. New Delhi suspended a four-year-old peace process with Islamabad after the Mumbai attacks, blamed on Pakistani-based militants.
At least 33 people were wounded on Saturday, police said. No-one has claimed responsibility for the attack.
“There has been a bomb blast,” senior police official Rajendra Sonawane told reporters. “There was an abandoned bag which seems to have contained some IED. (improvised explosive device).”
The explosion at German Bakery occurred in the evening, when the restaurant was packed with tourists and foreigners. “Four women foreigners were killed. Their nationality is not known.” Dilip Band, a senior police official, told CNN-IBN television.
Debris was strewn all around the bakery, located near Osho ashram, which is also frequented by foreigners, and also near a Jewish center. The impact of the blast knocked the bakery’s sign off, blew out windows and left a large crater inside the restaurant.
“It (the bomb) was under one of the tables … We transferred lots of people to the ambulances … there is no German bakery any more,” one foreigner, short of breath and resting against a wall, told local CNN-IBN television.
“There are eight dead and 33 injured in the blast at the German Bakery,” said Sonawane, a joint commissioner of police.
“We heard a big noise and we all rushed out. The impact was so much that there were tiny body parts everywhere,” said Vinod Dhale, an employee at the bakery.
Militants killed 166 people during a three-day rampage through the financial hub of Mumbai in November 2008, which raised tensions between nuclear rivals Pakistan and India.
Before Mumbai, a wave of bombs hit Indian cities in 2008, killing more than 100 people. Police blamed most of those attacks on home-grown Muslim militants, although some Hindu militants have also been suspected of carrying out several attacks.
Authorities have warned of renewed threats of attacks on Indian soil and have in recent months stepped up security across the country of 1.2 billion people.
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Eight die in Pune, India’s first big attack since Mumbai
