GUWAHATI, India - At least 12 people, mostly shoppers, were killed and more than 40 injured in two simultaneous bomb attacks Sunday in the northeastern Indian city of Guwahati, police said. The Press Trust of India (PTI) put the number of those injured at 52 and said 15 of them were in critical condition following the two attacks.Police said the first bomb ripped through the upscale Fancy Bazaar shopping arcade in the heart of Guwahati, the largest city in the nation’s strife-torn state of Assam. “We have eight people killed in first blast which took place at around 6:40 pm (1340 GMT),” said Deepak Narayan Dutt, Assam’s police chief. “And some 40 people are injured in the two attacks,” Dutt said in Guwahati, Assam’s largest city and de facto state capital.
Half of the injured victims were shoppers and vendors at the marketplace, Guwahati deputy police chief Rajan Singh said and added the popular complex was crowded with people when the explosion occurred. “An IED (improvised explosive device) caused both the blasts,” he said as military and police explosives experts fanned into other city markets and malls, trawling for concealed bombs.
The second bomb went off almost simultaneously in Patharkuwari on the cityÂ’s outskirts, leaving at least four civilians dead, state police chief Dutt said, updating the earlier toll by one. PTI said 45 of the victims were injured in the market blast while seven were hurt in Patharkuwari.