CHANDIGARH, India, Nov 4, Reuter: A series of bombs went off in a north Indian town crowded with holiday shoppers on Friday, killing at least 17 people and injuring 45, police said.
Three or four bombs, timed to go off simultaneously in the middle of the afternoon, ripped through a bazaar area in the Punjab town of Batala they said.
The bazaar was crowded at the time with people shopping for next week’s Hindu festival of lights.
Police said the bombs were similar to three that killed 21 people on Tuesday. Two went off in Parthankot and another on a bus that had begun its journey in the Punjab town.
The United News of India news agency said militant discovered with a fourth bomb near Pathankot on Tuesday told interrogators his conscience prevented him planting the bomb in a bus as planned.
Elsewhere in the state, militants killed at least five people in a number of separate shootings.
Friday’s deaths take the number of victims of the ongoing separatist campaign this year to over 2,200 according to an unofficial count.
In another incident gunmen pulled 10 people off a bus near the Sikh holy city of Amritsar on Thursday and shot them dead, police said.
Police said four militants stopped a bus by puncturing its tires. They dragged off 10 men, nine of them Hindus and killed them.
Police said one woman was injured, apparently as she tried to shelf a MGN.
Article extracted from this publication >> November 11, 1988
