India calls deadly blast in bakery a terrorist attack

At least nine people were killed in western India on Saturday when an explosion ripped through a bakery packed with locals and foreigners.

The Home Ministry labeled it a terrorist attack and said one foreigner was among the dead. If terrorism is confirmed, the attack in the city of Pune would be the first of its kind in India since late 2008, when 10 gunmen struck at several sites in nearby Mumbai, killing 166 people.

The nationalities of the victims in Saturday’s attack were not yet known.

Television showed the destroyed German Bakery with glass shards, pools of blood, dangling wires and a 6-by-4-foot hole blasted through the wall. At least 30 people were wounded.

Sunil Sukumaran, a 26-year-old merchant marine who lives a few miles from the bakery, said he stopped in for a doughnut an hour and a half before the blast and more than half of the customers at that point were foreigners.

The Koregaon Park neighborhood where the explosion occurred has many high-tech companies and is popular with foreign students and backpackers, including Israelis. It’s also near an ashram that trains foreigners and to a Chabad House, a Jewish center for travelers.

“I am shocked. I never thought this could happen in Pune,” said Pranav Rawat, 21, a student.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast, which occurred about 7:30 p.m. when a waiter opened an unclaimed bag, government officials said.

Over the last week, investigators received reports of possible attacks on crowded religious sites, local news reports said, but the information wasn’t specific enough to act on.

The bakery was near a hotel used by David Headley, a U.S. citizen arrested in Chicago who is suspected of scouting possible attack sites in India before the Mumbai siege.

Indian security came under sharp criticism over its handling of the Mumbai attack, in which 10 gunmen held several sites hostage in South Asia’s financial capital hostage for nearly three days.

This time, security officials sought to reassure the public that a forensic team and bomb unit had been dispatched to the scene almost immediately.

mark.magnier @latimes.com

Anshul Rana in The Times’ New Delhi Bureau contributed to this report.