Indian City Bustling Again After Bombings
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG Associated Press Writer
WINK TV
The Associated Press
VARANASI, India Honking cars competed with pushcarts in narrow alleys and devout Hindus offered prayers on the banks of the Ganges River on Thursday as Hinduism’s holiest city bustled again after bombings that killed 20 people.
With the end of a general strike that shut markets and schools and kept traffic off roads to protest Tuesday’s blasts, the city’s vibrant street life was back
Boatmen returned to the Ganges, carrying pilgrims and tourists. Shop owners chewing betel leaves sat behind display cases of cell phones, cheap electronics and Hindi music. The city’s narrow alleyways were choked with cars, pushcarts and people _ and once again nearly impassable.
Soldiers and police deployed to holy sites after the blasts _ two at a train station and another at a temple to the Hindu monkey-god Hanuman _ maintained a heavy presence Thursday in this northern India city.
At the Sankat Mochan temple, workers had cleared away most of the bomb damage by Thursday, although some of the blast debris was left so police could finish examining it.
Inside, the devout appealed to Hanuman, chanting prayers and rubbing sandalwood paste on statues of the monkey deity. The sound of monkeys running over the roof echoed throughout the building.
Although officials have not yet said who they believed was behind the attack, early evidence appeared to support the widespread belief that either homegrown Muslim extremists or Islamic militants from Pakistan were responsible.
A senior police official said witnesses reported hearing the suspected bombers speaking a dialect from the border region with Pakistan.
Various Islamic militant groups have been fighting Indian security forces in the insurgency-hit state of Jammu-Kashmir since 1989 to create a separate homeland or merge the Himalayan region into Pakistan.
A sketch of two of the suspects was released Thursday, and Navneet Sikera, the senior superintendent of police in Varanasi, said there may have been several more people involved.
“We know people who have seen the terrorists,” Sikera said .
Sikera said a shop owner who had seen the suspects described them as men in their late 20s, who appeared to be Kashmiris.
A previously unknown group claimed responsibility for the bombings in a call to the Central News Service, which is based in Jammu-Kashmir. A man who identified himself as Abu Kahar said the Lashkar-e-Qahar, or Army of Terror, was responsible.
“India’s cities will be targeted until atrocities against Kashmiris and abuse of their human rights is stopped,” the caller said. There was no way to confirm his claim.
Varanasi is among the world’s oldest cities, and millions of Hindu pilgrims gather here annually for ritual bathing and prayers on the banks of the Ganges.
The city of temples and holy men, beside an even holier river, is as ancient as India. To many here, the bombings were a bloody reminder of hundreds of years of tension and violence between South Asia’s Hindus and Muslims.
Some 100 traders and shop owners _ both Hindus and Muslims _ conducted a candlelight procession through crowded markets, urging residents to keep calm.
“There are groups trying to instigate people. We don’t want any violence,” said Ahmed Ali, a garment trader. “We prayed for the dead and peace in the city. We appealed to people not to pay heed to rumors.”
More than 80 percent of India’s 1 billion people are Hindu. Relations between them and Muslims, the country’s largest religious minority, have been largely peaceful since the partition of the subcontinent at independence from Britain in 1947, when more than 1 million people were killed as overwhelmingly Muslim Pakistan was carved from largely Hindu India.
But there have been sporadic bouts of savage violence, often sparked by attacks on temples or mosques.
