GUWAHATI: In the deadliest terror attacks in Assam, 80 people were killed and about 470 injured in 13 near-simultaneous blasts in Guwahati and three other towns by suspected Bangladesh-based HuJi militants. The first of the explosions went off at around 11.30 AM near the Ganeshguri flyover near the high-security capital complex housing the Assembly building, followed by explosions at Paltan Bazar and Fancy Bazar here--all within five minutes.
Around the same time, bombs also went off in crowded market places of Kokrajhar, Bongaigaon and Barpeta in lower Assam. Official sources put the toll at 80 dead and 470 injured. Of the six blasts in Guwahati, RDX was used in two of the explosions, Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi said adding a special task force has been set up to unearth the conspiracy behind the blasts.
However, police do not rule out the hand of ULFA behind the serial blasts with help from HuJI or jehadi elements. Black smoke billowed from the Deputy Commissioner's Office housing the district courts, which bore the brunt of the attacks in Guwahati, as vehicles, including a number of cars, turned into mangled heaps of metal. Police suspected that the bomb was planted in the court complex on a two-wheeler.
At least 33 people were killed in the blasts in Guwahati where an indefinite curfew was clamped following protests by residents, who accused the police of delayed action, official sources said. Assam has witnessed massive ethnic violence since early 1980s and ULFA-sponsored insurgency but this is the first time that a terror attack in the form of serial blasts rocked the state in such a magnitude. Union Home Secretary Madhukar Gupta indicated to reporters in Delhi that the blasts could be the handiwork of possibly some northeast groups having "external linkages", an apparent reference to HuJI which has links with ULFA.
Assam IGP (Khagen Sarma said the needle of suspicion pointed to involvement of HuJI. Angered at the blasts in Guwahati, a mob soon set vehicles ablaze and targeted ambulances and the media forcing the authorities to impose curfew in many areas. Bodies of the many of the dead were charred beyond recognition.
The blast sites were stewn with severed limbs and blood of the victims. A red alert was sounded across the state and army has also been put on alert in view of the security situation, he said after Gogoi held a review meeting with his cabinet colleagues and top officials. Nurse Anjana Saikia at the Guwahati Medical College Hospital, where 200 injured were admitted, went about doing her work in a state of daze changing saline bottles muttering that in 20 years of her career she had not seen so many people suffering such severe burn injuries.
Raju Balmiki, a sweeper in the hospital, said he carried several bodies to the mortuary but had not seen bodies so severely mutilated like this before. A wailing Malti Devi, whose 22-year old vegetable seller son was missing from Ganeshguri area, could not identify any of the bodies as that of her son and was seen asking several people whether they had seen him or not.
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