MUMBAI - Police stepped up security across India on Wednesday after bombs killed more than 160 people and wounded hundreds in packed commuter trains and stations in the financial hub, Mumbai.
"I urge people to remain calm, not to believe rumors, and carry on their activity normally," Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said, calling the seven explosions that took place during the evening rush hour on Tuesday a "shameful act".
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks but suspicion was likely to center on Muslim militants fighting New Delhi's rule in disputed Kashmir, who have been blamed for several bomb attacks in India in the past.
Pakistan, which denies Indian charges of tacit support for the militants, condemned what it labeled a "terrorist attack".
Extra security was brought in across India both to prevent any further attacks and to guard against any possible backlash against the minority Muslim community.
The blasts brought worldwide expressions of outrage.
"The United States stands with the people and the government of India and condemns in the strongest terms these atrocities, which were committed against innocent people as they went about their daily lives," President George W. Bush said in a statement.
"This is another awful reminder of the determination of terrorists who use murder as an instrument to advance their political ends," said Peter MacKay, Foreign Minister of Canada, which has a huge Indian emigre population.
"Such acts cannot possibly be excused by any grievance," U.N. spokeswoman Marie Okabe said in New York.
Police inspector Ashok Jadhav told Reuters the bomb blasts had killed 163 people and wounded around 460.
In the aftermath, hundreds of dazed passengers walked along railway lines and many helped pull bodies from mangled carriages and rush the injured to hospitals as monsoon rain fell.
"I took out at least 35 dead bodies from the trains," a middle-aged man told local TV, weeping uncontrollably. "There were people without hands and limbs and we took them to hospital."
Confidence Knocked
Commuters fled suburban rail stations in panic after the explosions and mobile phone lines were jammed. TV stations said an eighth bomb was defused in a Mumbai suburban station.
D.K Shankaran, chief secretary of the state of Maharashtra, of which Mumbai is the capital, said the city would bounce back.
"Mumbai will be up tomorrow. Every single school, college and office will remain open," he told Reuters.
But India's financial markets were expected to suffer on Wednesday, with analysts saying the attacks were likely knock foreign investor confidence.
Sonia Gandhi, leader of the ruling Congress party, expressed her grief before heading for Mumbai.
The blasts occurred on five trains and at two stations in Mumbai's western suburbs, which are linked to the downtown office and business areas mainly by an overground rail network used by some 6.5 million people each day.
All suburban train services in the city were suspended after the blasts but by late on Tuesday a limited service was running on the western line, along which the attacks took place.
The first attack took place at 6.24 p.m. (1154 GMT) with the others following in quick succession.
The Mumbai blasts came hours after suspected Islamist militants killed seven people, six of them tourists, in grenade attacks in Indian Kashmir's main city, Srinagar, police said, the most concerted targeting of civilians in months.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Khurseed Mehmood Kasuri told Reuters in Washington the blasts underlined the need for Pakistan and India to resolve their disputes. The neighbors, both nuclear-armed, have fought three wars since 1948.
A metropolis of about 17 million people formerly known as Bombay, Mumbai has been hit by bomb blasts in the past decade.
More than 250 people died in a string of bomb explosions there in 1993 for which authorities blamed underworld criminal gangs. Those attacks followed the demolition of a mosque in the Hindu holy city of Ayodhya.
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