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MUMBAI: In a breakthrough in the investigations into the July 11 serial blasts, the Mumbai Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) arrested three suspects, an official said on Friday. One suspect was picked up from Vashi in Navi Mumbai while two others were arrested from Bihar, ATS sources in Mumbai said. The one arrested in Vashi was identified as Mumtaz, the other two were named as Khalil Aziz and Kamal. The three arrested suspects would be produced at the Mazagon Court at noon, the official said. "This is a big breakthrough for us in the Mumbai blasts case," he said. The ATS...

Who funded Mumbai bombers? UK cops quiz cabbie after Manmohan told Tony it's time The investigations into last week's serial train blasts in Mumbai that left over 200 people dead and over 800 injured have now been expanded to cover other countries with the Scotland Yard questioning a Coventry-based cabbie serving a nine-year term for raising funds for Lashkar-e-Taiba. This follows a day after Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh spoke with his British counterpart Tony Blair on the sidelines of G-8 summit in St Petersburg in Russia reminding him of his promise to block funds being provided to Lashkar-e-Taiba by...

Pakistan's foreign secretary has called the postponement of peace talks with India a "negative development". Riaz Mohammed Khan also denied Indian allegations Pakistan had allowed its territory to be used by militants for attacks on its neighbour. India postponed the talks after the train bombings in Mumbai, which have left about 180 people dead. It said the environment was not favourable for a meeting this week to review the third round of talks. Mr Khan said linking the Mumbai bombings with the talks was incongruous, especially as both sides had stated they would not let terrorism derail the peace process....

SOME of the main fundraisers for the terror group suspected of masterminding the Bombay train bombings are operating from Britain, according to Indian intelligence officials. The officials accuse Britain of failing to act against a number of wealthy businessmen, who they claim are using bogus charities to funnel up to £8 million a year to Kashmiri militants groups, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, which remains the main suspect for orchestrating the synchronised bombings that killed 182 people. Manmohan Singh, the Indian Prime Minister, raised the terror link with Tony Blair at the G8 summit in St Petersburg yesterday, reminding him that India...

Are we heading for a Summer of Rage? A generation ago, young Americans flocked to San Francisco with flowers in their hair for a hippie Summer of Love. But today the potent combination of young people and sunny weather is producing something very different. The Sixties slogan was "Make Love Not War". The 2006 slogan seems to be the very opposite. From Mumbai to Mogadishu, from Helmand to Haifa, the past week has seen an eruption of violence. Around 200 people were killed on Tuesday when a succession of bombs exploded along what was once Bombay's Western railway line. Suspicion...

From Israel, lessons for Mumbai ---- Facetious as it may sound, weeks like this one are ripe for bemoaning the limits to outsourcing, and the fact that the mandate for India's internal security cannot be contracted out to the iron-willed consciousness of Israel. In the past two days, Israel has bombed Beirut airport and begun a naval blockade of Lebanon, aimed at disrupting the supply lines of Hizbullah terrorists and weaponry. It has refused to negotiate following Hizbullah's kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers, recognised that outrage for what it is - an act of war - and gone on the...

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is facing growing pressure to take a tough stand against Pakistan for rising incidents of terrorist violence in India. Sources in the Congress said the leadership is disappointed with Singh’s tame address to the nation on Wednesday, in which he did not mention Pakistan. Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma was equally cautious in a televised statement on Thursday. The issue may be raised at the core committee’s weekly meeting, which gives Sonia Gandhi and the PM a chance to exchange views. The meeting was scheduled to take place today but may...

The Al Qaeda terrorist outfit was launched in Jammu and Kashmir with its spokesman making the announcement in a telephone statement to a local news agency, Current News Service. As per the bulletin issued by the news agency, Abu Hadeed, who claimed to be the spokesman of the outfit said, "The world will soon be made abreast of its aims and objectives." The spokesman told CNS that Al Qaeda Jammu and Kashmir chief Abu Abdur Rahman Ansari has "expressed happiness over the Mumbai serial blasts and appreciated those who carried out these attacks." "The Mumbai attacks were a reaction to...

The awful rush-hour bombings of trains in Mumbai raise an important and ominous question: How far can India be pushed? This question was asked by a former director for South Asia at the US National Security Council, Xenia Dormandy, Wednesday as the United States - from President George Bush to the mainstream American media - joined the rest of the world in condemning the terror attacks in India. Pakistan needs to respond to militants, she herself answered in an article in the Washington Post, noting that in December 2001 India and Pakistan almost went to war when a group of...

SRINAGAR, India — A man claiming to represent al-Qaida in Kashmir said the terror network had set up a wing in Kashmir and appealed to Indian Muslims to take up jihad, an Indian news agency reported Thursday. An official said the government said it was taking the claim "very seriously." The man, who identified himself as Abu al-Hadeed, told Kashmir's Current News Service that "who so ever has carried out the attacks in Bombay we express our gratitude and happiness." As word of the announcement spread, a senior intelligence official in Kashmir said the call had been placed from a...

“If a link is proved,” Whiteman said, “it is likely Bakri will be investigated also, as he has been cyber-preaching from Beirut to British extremists through the U.S.-based Paltalk network, and it is known that Izadeen and Bakri are close. Following his 7/11 comments on July 2 in Birmingham, the question are will he be investigated for involvement in mass murder or was he just talking about a ‘shop?’”

Defused bomb crucial to Mumbai investigation 15:27 12 July 2006 NewScientist.com news service Paul Marks As forensic scientists begin poring over the wreckage of Tuesday’s seven train bombings in Mumbai, India, experts say the defusing of an eighth bomb could prove crucial to the investigation. "It's enormously important to have discovered and defused one of the bombs," says Sidney Alford, a UK-based bomb disposal expert. "It lets you make some pretty critical deductions. You can work out the source of the explosives and perhaps the detonators. You may even get fingerprints or DNA." In the space of 11 minutes on...

SIMI involved in Mumbai blasts: Home Min NDTV Correspondent Wednesday, July 12, 2006: (Mumbai) The Home Ministry has confirmed the involvement of Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) in the Mumbai blasts. As per investigations carried out so far, SIMI provided local logistics for the deadly blasts that rocked Mumbai on Tuesday, killing 185 people and injuring 714 others. The Mumbai police had earlier claimed that the module comprises people with no earlier criminal record and that the blasts were triggered to create communal tension in Mumbai and Maharashtra. The probe has revealed that all bombs were placed in the...

An inconsolable mother sits outside the Intensive Care Unit at the Karuna Hospital in the Mumbai suburb of Borivali. Holding a rosary, she is praying desperately. Inside, her only son, 18-year-old Vikrant Khanwilkar, is battling for his life, having been grievously injured in Tuesday's blasts in Mumbai. She says a bright and lively Vikrant is a second-year microbiology student at the city's Wilson College. The grief-stricken mother has been sitting there since 2 am along with her husband Satish, an art director at Priya Maitrini, a Marathi magazine. The shocked father tried calling up his son as soon as he...

Enough is enough! Saisuresh Sivaswamy When the first of the explosives went off at the Bombay Stock Exchange on March 12, 1993, by chance I was in the vicinity. Hearing a muffled boom and following the citizenry that was running towards the sound -- and not away from it as instinct would tell one to -- I soon came across sights of blood and gore that will not go away easily. March 12, 1993 can never be forgotten by a Mumbaikar. Or forgiven. Chance once again kept me in New York on September 11, 2001, when twisted, horrific minds...

Maharashtra tops jihadi target Pioneer News Service | Mumbai 148 killed 8 blasts in 11 minutes ---- It was like a chronicle of a tragedy foretold. Mumbai was always a soft target. The heart of the Indian economy, the tinsel metropolis, which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh wanted to turn into Shanghai has had several close shaves with terror in the last few months. The signals should have been enough to keep intelligence agencies on high alert, round-the-year, round-the-clock. Not just Mumbai. Indeed, the whole of Maharashtra was perched on a tinderbox with reports of explosives seizure pouring in on a...

BOMBAY, India (AP) -- Indian stocks rose a surprising 3 percent Wednesday, despite predictions of a sell-off following a series of train bombings the previous day that rocked the country's financial capital. Upbeat earnings from software company Infosys Technologies Ltd. helped lift the market, boosting investor confidence in the country's technology and outsourcing industries. The benchmark index of the Bombay Stock Exchange, the 30-share Sensex, rose 314 points, or 3 percent, to finish at 10,928. The index initially dipped 0.3 percent as trading opened, but soon recovered and continued to climb throughout the day. The market's performance surprised analysts who...

Bombay struggles a day after explosions By RAMOLA TALWAR BADAM, Associated Press Writer 11 minutes ago BOMBAY, India - Indian investigators on Wednesday combed through the twisted and torn wreckage of train cars ripped apart a day earlier by well-coordinated bombings that killed 190 people and wounded hundreds during the city's evening rush hour. The eight bombs tore through packed trains, stunning a city that embodies India's global ambitions, presenting itself to the world as a crowded and cosmopolitan metropolis where bankers dine with movie stars and fashion models party until dawn. As Bombay's 16 million people struggled to regain...

Message from the Mumbai blasts: Don't get close to the US July 12, 2006 If ever there was a demonstration that cross-border terrorism remains a pertinent threat to freedom-loving people everywhere, it happened on 7/11 in Mumbai, the financial capital of India. A series of bomb blasts on the most crowded suburban rail system in the world has killed at least 174 people and wounded scores more. As we recently observed the one-year memorial of the 7/7 blasts in London, these attacks should not be seen as separate from them or from the wedding bombings in Jordan in 2005, or...

BOMBAY, India (AP) - 0711dv-india-blasts Eight bombs exploded in first-class compartments of packed Bombay commuter trains Tuesday, killing 190 people and wounding hundreds in a well-coordinated terror attack on the heart of a city that embodies India's global ambitions. Suspicion quickly fell on Kashmiri militants who have repeatedly carried out nearly simultaneous explosions in attacks on Indian cities, including bombings last year at three markets in New Delhi. Pakistan, India's rival over the disputed territory of Kashmir, quickly condemned Tuesday's bombings. Even so, India alleges that Pakistan supports the Muslim militants, and analysts said a Kashmiri link to the blasts...