Bomb Kills 6 People in New Delhi Bazaar

In the Indian capital’s deadliest terrorist attack in two years, a bomb that may have been hidden in a motor scooter tore through a crowded New Delhi bazaar on Wednesday, killing at least six people and igniting a devastating fire that gutted nearby shops.

The lethal explosion, about three weeks before one of India’s most important national rituals is to be held here, sparked a flurry of high-level attention. The central Sadar Bazar area was roped off, and crack “Black Cat” police commandos were sent in to hunt for clues.

A little-known Kashmiri separatist group, in a phone call to an Indian news agency, claimed that it set off the bomb to protest “atrocities” by Indian security forces in the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir.

An eyewitness said he thought the explosives, which went off about 3:15 p.m., had been hidden in a parked scooter. The explosion engulfed the market area near New Delhi’s main railroad station in smoke and set alight a gas-lamp shop, where five gas cylinders quickly exploded and spread the flames to other stores.

At least half a dozen outlets selling paper goods, upholstery foam and general provisions were gutted before firefighters managed to douse the flames about an hour after the explosion.

Officials said six people were killed and 32 injured, four of them seriously. But some eyewitnesses said they saw up to 10 bodies carried away.

The blood of the victims soaked a three-wheel taxi and lay in pools on the bazaar’s pavement. The blast, which Additional Deputy Police Commissioner Mahavir Singh said was caused by a “sophisticated device,” shattered five bicycle rickshaws, three motor scooters and a three-wheel motorized rickshaw. A rickshaw pedaler and his customer were among the dead; the others killed were believed to be passersby, police said.

Shopkeeper Rohit Jain said thick, blinding smoke filled the marketplace after the blast. Ajit Garg, another store owner, said that the blast sowed panic and that owners and employees of burning shops managed a miraculous escape, though some were among the injured.

It was the third bombing in India’s capital in five months, and by far the most serious. It was certain to provoke added concern among law enforcement officials, who on Jan. 26 will have to ensure order at the Republic Day parade, a public extravaganza attended by hundreds of thousands of people, including the president, the prime minister and other VIPs.

A bomb on the same holiday last year in Jammu, the winter capital of Kashmir, killed seven people and narrowly missed assassinating the state’s governor, Gen. K. V. Krishna Rao.

Intelligence Bureau officials, National Security guards and experts from the Central Forensic Laboratory were rapidly called in to investigate the New Delhi bombing. The city’s top elected official, Chief Minister Madan Lal Khurana, visited the wounded in hospitals and announced that families of the dead would receive a condolence payment of about $800.

In September 1993, a car bomb apparently meant for the head of the Indian Youth Congress killed eight people and injured 29 in his convoy.

In September 1994, two bombs went off during rush-hour traffic near the historic Red Fort in old Delhi, injuring more than 40 people. Police blamed those explosions on Sikhs fighting for a separate nation in the northwestern state of Punjab.

In November, a bomb exploded outside a crowded restaurant in New Delhi’s upscale Connaught Place shopping district, injuring 22 people. Both the Jammu and Kashmir Islamic Front, which claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s bombing, and a Sikh militant group said it was their doing.