MUMBAI - Victims of Mumbai's deadly bombings battled for life in crowded city hospitals on Wednesday but millions of others put the threat of more attacks to the back of their minds as India's financial hub went back to work.
Investigators picked through mangled trains to search for clues as to who was behind Tuesday's seven coordinated bomb blasts that killed at least 185 people. Suspicion fell on Pakistan-based militants fighting Indian rule in Kashmir.
Tuesday's attacks, on first-class compartments and railway stations, seemed to have been aimed at the heart of India's economic success story, but just hours later the city's residents were back at work and the stock market was steady.
"It's a little scary, but we have no option to go back to work," said Amita Rane, a 24-year-old chartered accountant.
Around 700 were wounded when seven bombs blew apart railway carriages and stations packed with rush-hour commuters in the space of just 11 minutes.
The death toll was the worst since a series of bombs killed more than 250 in Mumbai in 1993. The attacks were also eerily reminiscent of serial bomb blasts on commuter rail networks in Madrid and London in the past two years.
"In my view the Mumbai bombers could have been inspired by the London and Madrid attacks," said Peter Lehr at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at Britain's St. Andrews University.
"It is an attempt to instil fear and terror in the minds of the people and spark a new wave of communal violence among Hindus and Muslims. In this they have miserably failed."
On Wednesday relatives and friends of victims were still poring over survivors' lists at city hospitals or trying to identify charred and mutilated corpses. Others were inside the wards, tending to the injured lying on blood-soaked beds.
Kashmir Link?
In the state-run King Edward Memorial Hospital, a woman cried inconsolably after seeing the half-burnt face of her husband, who was critically wounded.
"That cannot be him, that cannot be him. It cannot happen to him," she wailed.
Extra police were deployed at railway stations, parks, markets and religious institutions across the country to prevent further attacks and possible violence between Hindus and Muslims.
But instead of violence, there was a rare show of harmony between the two communities. Muslims queued for hours in Mumbai to give blood to their Hindu neighbours, and also helped injured Hindus to hospitals and gave relatives cups of tea.
"We don't care whether its a Hindu or a Muslim who gets our blood as long as we can save them," said Abdul Khan, one of dozens of Muslims queueing to give blood at one hospital.
The explosions happened hours after a series of grenade attacks on tourists in Srinagar, capital of Indian Kashmir, which killed eight people. Another grenade explosion at a mountain resort in Kashmir on Wednesday wounded five more tourists.
Police in Kashmir blamed the attacks there on the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, which authorities say is backed by Pakistan and was also behind bomb blasts in crowded markets in New Delhi last October that killed more than 60.
India's Home Secretary V.K. Duggal said that although the explosives were different, the same people could have been behind both sets of attacks. Newspapers quoted unnamed security sources as naming Lashkar as the prime suspect for the Mumbai blasts, but the group denied any role in the "inhuman and barbaric acts".
India Angered
Pakistan, which denies supporting the militants, condemned what it called a "terrorist attack" in Mumbai.
Indian Junior Foreign Minister Anand Sharma said the blasts were aimed at "wrecking" the peace process between the nuclear-armed rivals but New Delhi remained committed to improving ties with Islamabad.
Later, though, India reacted angrily to comments from Pakistani Foreign Minister Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri, who told Reuters that the two countries could only cooperate to fight extremism if they resolved outstanding disputes.
"We find it appalling that Foreign Minister Kasuri should seek to link this blatant and inhuman act of terror against men, women and children to the so-called lack of resolution of disputes between India and Pakistan," External Affairs Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna told a news conference.
Mumbai is a teeming metropolis of contrasts, with glitzy high-rise office and apartment blocks standing side-by-side with slums and pavement dwellers. Home to Bollywood, the world's biggest movie industry, the city lures millions of rural poor.
But though sometimes considered hard-hearted, Mumbai residents went out of their way to help fellow city dwellers, offering rides in cars, providing water and biscuits, and taking the dead and injured to hospitals.
"We're used to crises here," said Makarand Bhopatkar, a 35-year-old corporate trainer. "The city survives."
After a shaky start on Wednesday, India's financial markets regained their poise, with the stock market closing up nearly three percent.
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