India Braces for Backlash as Bomb Victims Cremated

[QuietStorm]

India Braces for Backlash as Bomb Victims Cremated
Tue August 26, 2003 05:19 AM ET
By Terry Friel and Maria Abraham

BOMBAY (Reuters) - India stepped up security nationwide on Tuesday to head off any Hindu-Muslim violence as grieving families of the victims of twin car bombings in the financial capital Bombay prepared to cremate their dead.

Police have blamed the bombings, which killed 48 people, on an outlawed Muslim students group, acting along with a Pakistan-based Kashmiri separatists.

Among the victims were eight people from western Gujarat state, where at least 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, died last year in revenge killings following an attack on a train carrying Hindu pilgrims from the northern holy town of Ayodhya.

The eight Gujaratis, whose bodies were being taken back on Tuesday to their home town of Surendranagar, had been on a pilgrimage to a Hindu festival and were in Bombay on holiday.



http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=3335882&src=eDialog/GetContent§ion=news