Bombs Kill 20 in Indian Holy City

Bomb blasts in a crowded Hindu temple and a railway station left at least 20 people dead and dozens seriously wounded Tuesday in the holy city of Varanasi, government officials and local media reported.

One explosion rocked the Sankatmochan temple complex, one of the ancient city’s oldest Hindu places of worship, as hundreds of people were inside. A short time later, two more bombs detonated minutes apart in a railway station, police said. An express train bound for the capital, New Delhi, was waiting at a nearby platform for a scheduled departure in 10 minutes.

“We saw people screaming in pain and running helter-skelter,” railway police subinspector Jawahar Lal said in a telephone interview.

Volunteers who helped rush casualties to hospitals reported seeing at least 20 dead and nearly 100 injured, said Rolly Singh, who heads a local aid organization.

“Five to six people were lying half-dead,” said Lal, one of the first officers on the scene at the train station. “They were so badly hurt that they could barely make any sound, let alone scream. We could count 20 to 22 others who were badly injured.”

The blasts left a crater several feet deep, Lal said.

“The sound was deafening. It was as if two or three gas cylinders had blown up at once,” he said. “The foreign tourists’ facilitation counter and the railway booking office were completely damaged, and the railway station superintendent, who sits at the booking office, was himself seriously injured.”

No group immediately took responsibility for the blasts. A police investigation of similar multiple bombings in October that killed 61 people in New Delhi attributed the attacks to the Pakistan-based Islamic militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Police said they had defused two more bombs elsewhere in the city.

Varanasi, formerly known as Benares, is a sacred city to Hindus, who believe that if they die on the banks of the Ganges there, they will be freed from the cycle of death and reincarnation and achieve eternal bliss. Hundreds of bodies are burned each day in Varanasi’s funeral pyres and the ashes are spread in the river.

The city, which also draws large numbers of foreign tourists, is about 430 miles southeast of New Delhi. Although it is most significant to Hindus, the city has sites holy to several faiths. It is an important Buddhist pilgrimage site and has Muslim, Christian and Sikh places of worship.

The attacks came four days after a visit to India by President Bush, during which hundreds of thousands of demonstrators, many of them Muslims and supporters of left-wing political parties, held mainly peaceful protests.

Varanasi is in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, and police moved quickly Tuesday night to step up security amid concerns that the blasts could spark sectarian violence.

After the bombings, Shahid Siddiqui, general secretary of the left-wing Samajwadi Party allied with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s coalition government, said he feared India had become a target of “international terrorists and extremists” because the nation is moving closer to the U.S.

“We have to be on our alert now because the terrorists who are targeting the United States, or other countries, will target us,” Siddiqui said on Indian television.

Earlier Tuesday, Singh promoted in parliament the civilian nuclear cooperation deal reached Thursday with Bush. India agreed to open some of its nuclear facilities to United Nations inspectors while keeping others closed for military purposes.

The deal must be approved by the U.S. Congress, India’s parliament and the 44-nation Nuclear Suppliers Group. Opponents say it is flawed because it allows India to expand its nuclear arsenal despite its refusal to sign the international Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

If the agreement is approved, India will be able to produce as much weapons-grade material as it needs for weapons “to meet the current and future requirements of our strategic program,” Singh said.

“No constraint has been placed on our right to construct new facilities for strategic purposes,” he said. “The integrity of our nuclear doctrine and our ability to sustain a minimum credible nuclear deterrent is adequately protected. Our nuclear policy will continue to be guided by the principles of restraint and responsibility.”

India has 22 nuclear reactors in operation or under construction; 14 of those will be opened in phases to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency, Singh said.

The ones that remain closed will be used for military purposes, presumably for making weapons.

“I wish to emphasize that the choice of specific nuclear reactors and the phases in which they would be placed under [IAEA] safeguards is an Indian decision,” he added.

The government plans to shut down its CIRUS nuclear reactor, which has produced much of the material for its nuclear weapons, in 2010, Singh said. The reactor was supplied by Canada in 1954, and fueled with heavy water from the U.S., after India promised it would be used only for peaceful purposes.

Singh said he decided to close the reactor “rather than allow intrusive inspections in a nuclear facility of high national security importance. We are determined that such steps will not hinder ongoing research and development.”

He said India would keep two fast breeder reactors at Kalpakkam that are ideal for producing fissile material for nuclear weapons, closed to inspections. India will also retain the right to decide whether future reactors are civilian or military, he added.

“India will be able to join the international mainstream and occupy its rightful place among the top countries of the nuclear community,” Singh told parliament. “There would be a quantum jump in our energy generating capacity with a consequential impact on our [economic] growth.”