Image released by Indian Police today of a man identified as Sayyad Zabiuddin. Indian authorities named two men as the first suspects in this week's train bombings
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| India-Pakistan |
| India names 2 suspects in train attacks |
| 2006-07-13 |
| BOMBAY, India - Indian authorities named two suspects Thursday in this week's train bombings, an apparent breakthrough in the frenetic investigations into the well-coordinated attacks that killed at least 200 people. The government's Anti-Terror Squad released photos of young, lightly bearded men identified as Sayyad Zabiuddin and Zulfeqar Fayyaz, said Sunil Mane, an anti-terror official. Officials did not provide their nationalities, and it wasn't clear where the photos — head shots which appeared to have been taken for identification documents — originated. But officials said earlier Thursday that the prime suspect in Tuesday's bombings is Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, a Pakistan-based Islamic militant group that operates in Kashmir, the Himalayan region at the center of the long-running India-Pakistan conflict. "Different indicators are there which hint at their involvement," said D.K. Shankaran, the top bureaucrat in Maharashtra state, where Bombay is the capital city. He refused to elaborate, but said seven teams of investigators were sifting through clues. "The probe into blasts is on track and we should have something substantial soon." Lashkar has previously carried out near-simultaneous explosions in Indian cities, including a bombing in New Delhi in October that killed more than 60 people. Lashkar was also named in an attack on India's Parliament in 2001. A spokesman for Lashkar, Abdullah Ghaznavi, has denied the group was involved in the serial train bombings across Bombay that left at least 200 people dead and more than 700 injured. Also Thursday, a man claiming to represent al-Qaida reportedly said the terror network had set up a wing in Kashmir, where Muslim militants have been fighting for independence or union with overwhelmingly Muslim Pakistan. There was no way to immediately verify the statement, which if true would be the first time Osama bin Laden's network has claimed to have spread to Indian territory. Kashmir's Current News Service reported that it received a telephone call from a man who identified himself as Abu al-Hadeed, an Arabic name. The man, however, spoke in Urdu, the language of most Muslims on the Indian subcontinent. The news service, based in Srinagar, the summer capital of the Indian part of Kashmir, reported that the man said, "Today a unit of al-Qaida has been established in Jammu and Kashmir which shall henceforth be called al-Qaida Jammu and Kashmir." The man also praised the Bombay bombings. "Whosoever has carried out the attacks in Bombay we express our gratitude and happiness," the man reportedly said, and also appealed to Indian Muslims to take up the struggle against the Indian government. The developments came after police conducted raids across this city of 16 million people and detained 350 people for questioning, most of them in Malwani, a northeastern suburb of Bombay, said police Inspector S. Goshal. He said none was formally arrested or charged, and they were rounded up only to help with the investigations. |
| Posted by:Steve |
| #1 Image released by Indian Police today of a man identified as Sayyad Zabiuddin. Indian authorities named two men as the first suspects in this week's train bombings |
| Posted by: john 2006-07-13 16:13 |