No one has claimed responsibility for the attack Saturday night that killed nine people in the city of Pune, 200 kilometers southeast of Mumbai. Suspicions, however, quickly fell on Islamic militant groups blamed for past attacks, including the 2008 Mumbai massacre when Pakistan-based militants ran amok in the country´s financial hub. [break]
Officials said one or two people posing as customers left a backpack containing a bomb in the German Bakery. In addition to the nine deaths, 60 people were wounded.
While the restaurant did not have security cameras, police were examining video shot by cameras installed at a hotel across the street, police said.
On Monday, police showed the footage to bakery workers who had spotted the abandoned backpack before it exploded, a police officer said, speaking on condition of because he was not authorized to talk to reporters about an ongoing investigation.
The bombing was India´s first major terrorist attack since the Mumbai siege and came just a day after India and Pakistan scheduled their first formal dialogue since New Delhi suspended wide-ranging peace talks in the aftermath of the Mumbai attacks.
Security forces have been put on high alert at airports, train stations and markets across India, and Hindu nationalists have blamed Pakistan and demanded the talks be canceled.
Meanwhile, Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said India wanted to question a terror suspect linked to Pakistani militant groups who is detained in the United States and accused of scouting out targets ahead of the Mumbai attack.
Officials said David Headley had cased the Osho Ashram, a meditation retreat near the German Bakery, and the Chabad Jewish center.
Nitzan Nuriel, head of counterterrorism at Israel´s National Security Agency, said the Pune attack wasn´t directed at Chabad.
"The attack in india was not directed at Chabad house, even though Chabad houses appear on the potential lists of targets maintained by some of the groups that operate in the area," Nuriel said.
Washington has been sharing intelligence with Indian agencies, but so far has not allowed them to meet with Headley.
The US charges say Headley had attended militant training camps in Pakistan and conspired with Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba to conduct surveillance in Mumbai before the November 2008 terror attacks that killed 166 people.
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