At least 160 people were killed in the series of explosions that rocked commuter rail network during rush hour Tuesday evening, The Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency, citing officials, said.

 

Mumbai Police Chief A.N. Roy put the number of injured to more than 300 in the explosions in the financial capital of India.

 

The blasts occurred at packed railway stations or on trains in the Matunga, Khar, Mahim, Jogeshwari, Borivali and Bhayendar localities in and around Mumbai and a seventh blast occurred at a subway near Khar.

 

The first blast took place at 6.25 PM in a commuter train near Khar station and other explosions quickly followed, the Indo-Asian News Service said.

 

Most of the deaths are believed to have occurred at just one station, Matunga, where a deafening explosion ripped through a train carriage.

 

The explosions tore through at least two compartments packed with people returning home from work.

 

Hundreds of people living in buildings adjoining the railway stations and surviving passengers rushed to railway station amid incessant rains and picked up bodies splattered on the tracks.

 

Survivors, their faces and body parts covered in blood, stood dazed, a few of them trying desperately to reach to their families over mobile telephones.

 

TV footage shows chaos throughout the crowded rail network following the explosions. Some of the injured were being carried away from the crash site.

 

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks.

 

But Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that "terrorists" were behind the attacks.

 

Singh called an emergency cabinet meeting to discuss the violence.

 

"We will work to defeat the evil designs of terrorists and will not allow them to succeed," Singh said in a statement after the closed-door meeting.

 

"The government will take all possible measures to maintain law and order and defeat the forces of terrorism," Singh added.

 

Indian Home Minister Shivraj Patil told reporters that authorities had "some" information an attack was coming, but the place and time was not known.

 

Train services in the city were immediately brought to a halt, while authorities sounded a high security alert at the Mumbai airports.

 

Indian security agencies were put on high alert yesterday after the blasts. Reinforced paramilitary forces were being deployed to airports across India while commandos took position in the airports of Mumbai, New Delhi, Bangalore and Kolkata, officials were cited by local media reports as saying.

 

This is the first time terror blasts have occurred on moving trains in Mumbai, bringing back memories of the March 1993 serial blasts that killed more than 250 people.

 

(Xinhua News Agency July 12, 2006)