Terror strikes Pune

Terror returned to haunt the country on Saturday when a bomb blast ripped through Pune’s popular German Bakery, close to the Osho Ashram and diagonally across from the Jewish Chabad House, recced by 26/11 suspect David Coleman Headley. At least nine people were killed, three of them foreigners, all women. More than 45 people have been rushed to hospital with varying degrees of injury. This is the first terror attack since the 26/11 Mumbai carnage. Over the last two months, there has been a growing buzz of an imminent strike, especially as India and Pakistan were preparing to resume talks that had been suspended after the Mumbai massacre. Now, there is a question mark over the dialogue scheduled to be held in Delhi on February 25. The explosion took place at 7.15 pm when the bakery was milling with people, many of them foreigners. According to Union home secretary G K Pillai, there was an unattended packet which exploded when a waiter tried to open it. The German Bakery is a popular haunt of foreigners like Leopold Cafe in Mumbai. In fact, both are mentioned by the Lonely Planet tourist guide and are therefore patronised by many backpackers. Investigators from the army’s bomb disposal squad said it appeared that a battery-operated improvised explosive device had been used. “We have found traces of an explosive,’’ said M Z Ansari, one of the officials. The impact of the explosion was such that the concrete walls of the bakery caved in while its fibre roof was blown to bits. The body parts of some of the dead and the injured were found strewn on the North Main Road and near the gates of the O Hotel, a few metres from the bakery. Most of the injured had suffered burns and fractures, doctors at Sassoon hospital said. Chabad House in Mumbai, which was attacked on 26/11, had been recced by Headley, just as he had visited the Pune one. Headley had stayed at the Surya Villa Hotel in Pune’s tony Koregaon area which is close to the blast site. In Delhi, G K Pillai called an emergency meeting of security officials and instructed all state capitals to be put on high alert. A team also began interrogation of Batla House terror suspect Shahzad Ahmad to find out if he had any information about an impending attack in Pune. “It is most probably a terror attack. We are sending a forensic team of the CBI and personnel of the National Investigative Agency,’’ Pillai said. Panic gripped Pune as the news of the blast spread. The police, however, refused to confirm whether any terror group was involved, saying it was too early to arrive at a conclusion. They closed all roads to the Koregaon Park area and a nakabandi has been ordered across the city.