200 Killed, 1,100 Hurt as 13 Bomb Blasts Rock Bombay : India: Explosions target stock exchange, airline headquarters and hotels. No one claims responsibility.

Nearly 200 people were killed and 1,100 injured Friday in a series of bomb explosions in Bombay, the Indian commercial capital still recovering from deadly Hindu-Muslim riots.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the 13 bombs, most of them car bombs, that went off over a 75-minute period in places ranging from the southern financial district to the northern suburbs. There was no evidence to suggest that the blasts were related to the Hindu-Muslim violence that swept India in December and January.

In a country that has witnessed all manner of ethnic, religious and nationalist violence in 46 years of independence, the devastating bomb assault was a new and terrifying experience.

Thunderous explosions shook skyscrapers, set fire to the nation’s largest stock exchange, gutted the ground floor of the headquarters of India’s international airline, blew apart a passenger bus and damaged three hotels.

“There is panic in the whole of Bombay,” said stockbroker Harpreet Kaur.

Indian news agencies that surveyed hospitals gave higher death tolls than the official count of 100. United News of India said more than 200 people died, and Press Trust of India put the figure at 184. In previous instances, tolls compiled by the agencies were more accurate than the government’s figures.

Chief Minister Sharad Pawar, the highest elected official of Maharashtra state, summoned reinforcements of paramilitary troops, fearing another outbreak of communal bloodshed in India’s biggest metropolis.

Shortly after the blasts, scattered Hindu-Muslim violence broke out in the city. Witnesses saw mobs burning cars, looting shops and throwing stones.

The riots in January also pitted Muslims against Hindus. They began after Hindu zealots demolished a mosque in the northern town of Ayodhya. The official death toll nationwide was 1,940, including 600 in Bombay.

Pawar refused to say whom he suspected in the bombing wave. But he told reporters, “There has to be perfect planning” for this kind of attack.

He advised Bombay’s 12 million residents to be on the alert for more bombs, to lock their cars and check the basements of tall buildings. The city, like India as a whole, is about 82% Hindu and 12% Muslim.

Teams of explosives experts from India’s foreign and domestic intelligence agencies rushed to Bombay.

Volunteers carried signs asking donors to head to hospitals after doctors reported a severe shortage of blood.

In New Delhi, India’s Home Minister Shankarrao Chavan blamed the terrorism on “an international conspiracy.” He did not mention any countries by name, but he often has accused Pakistan of trying to stir up trouble in India. The two nations have fought three wars since independence from Britain in 1947.

In India’s still highly charged religious atmosphere, suspicion that Pakistan, an Islamic nation, might have had a hand in the Bombay bombs could provoke fresh trouble across this nation of 870 million people.

The sour relations between the old enemies have deteriorated over a three-year rebellion in the Indian-ruled part of Kashmir, which both claim, and over the Dec. 6 destruction of the Ayodhya mosque.

Government officials said most of the bombs were in vehicles, but several were in unoccupied hotel rooms.

A devastating blast went off in the parking lot beneath the Bombay Stock Exchange building.

About 3,000 people were on the trading floor on the second story. “We were all lifted above the ground by two feet,” said one trader, Dinesh Acharya. “People fell on each other and ran out.”

Some victims were crushed in the stampede to escape the building.

Outside, burned bodies lay among the litter from shattered buildings. Many of the victims were vendors and stock traders who conduct their business in the street.

Another bomb went off outside the Air India headquarters among a cluster of high-rise commercial buildings in Nariman Point.

The Bank of Oman, which leased space on the street level, was destroyed.

Tajder Haider, bloodied from deep gashes on his face, said that “there was a total blackout. I opened my eyes and there was nothing in front of me.”

In the fashionable Century Bazaar shopping district, six miles from the stock exchange, a bomb that exploded near a waiting bus blew a 10-foot crater in the street. The street was covered with human remains and material debris.

“It was a bed of broken glass and hands, legs and bodies,” said Meena Menon, an Indian reporter. “Some passengers flew in all directions. The driver’s body fell on a building 100 feet away.”

Another bomb blew up a gasoline station near the headquarters of the Shiv Sena party, part of the Hindu nationalist movement.

The only recent comparable incident in India was the 1991 assassination of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, who was blown up by a suicide bomb worn by a woman of the Tamil Tiger guerrillas from Sri Lanka.

Sikh militants have used car bombs in their fight for a separate Sikh state in Punjab.

Muslim militants in Kashmir also have used explosives, including one in 1992 that went off in the office of the police chief as he was meeting the state’s top security officers.