Bombs Kill 26 in Punjab; Sikh Militants Blamed

Sikh separatists set off powerful bombs at a Hindu temple and in a crowded market in the north Indian state of Punjab, killing at least 26 people and injuring nearly 100, police said Tuesday.

Police in Chandigarh, the Punjab state capital, said one bomb exploded at the temple in Amritsar late Monday night as a gathering was ending, killing 21 people and injuring 69.

In Gurdaspur, near the Pakistani border, a bomb blast Tuesday morning in a crowded market killed five people and injured 28, police said.

The Press Trust of India news agency also said police in New Delhi found and defused two crude bombs in a residential area. The agency said police found evidence linking the devices to extremists waging a bloody campaign for an independent Sikh homeland in north India to be called Khalistan.

10 Children Among Victims

Police said the bomb in Amritsar, site of the Golden Temple, the holiest shrine of the Sikh religion, was set off by a timer or by remote control. The victims included 10 children and six women.

Police at first said the explosion was caused by a cylinder filled with gas used to inflate balloons, but on Tuesday evening, Punjab police official Chaman Lal told reporters it was a bomb.

It was the worst incident in Sikh-dominated Punjab since May 18, when separatist gunmen shot dead 30 workers in a migrant labor camp. Eight people were killed in a bombing last month.

The recent bombings began after security forces besieged the Golden Temple for 10 days, forcing about 150 extremists holed up inside to surrender.

The management committee controlling Sikh temples in most of north India began Tuesday to dismantle fortifications built inside the shrine by the extremists, the Press Trust of India said.

Nearly 400 people were killed in May and nearly 1,170 so far this year in Sikh separatist violence, compared with about 1,230 in all of 1987.