Indian officials name 3 bombings suspects
BOMBAY, India — Indian authorities named three suspects in this week's train bombings, an apparent breakthrough in the frenetic investigations into the well-coordinated attacks that killed at least 200 people.
Today, Bombay police said a man known only as Rahil was being sought in connection with the blasts but gave no more details. The government's Anti-Terror Squad on Thursday issued photos of two young, lightly bearded men identified as Sayyad Zabiuddin and Zulfeqar Fayyaz, said Sunil Mane, an anti-terror official.
Officials have said they believe the bombings were the work of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, a Pakistan-based Islamic militant group that operates in Kashmir, the region at the center of the long-running India-Pakistan conflict.
Lashkar has previously carried out near-simultaneous explosions in Indian cities, including a bombing in New Delhi in October that killed more than 60 people.
A spokesman for Lashkar, Abdullah Ghaznavi, has denied the group was involved in the bombings.
Also Thursday, a man claiming to represent al-Qaida reportedly said the terror network had set up a wing in Kashmir, where Muslim militants have been fighting for independence or union with overwhelmingly Muslim Pakistan. Kashmir's Current News Service reported that it received a telephone call from a man who identified himself as Abu al-Hadeed, an Arabic name.
The developments came after police conducted raids across this city of 16 million people and detained 350 people for questioning, most of them in Malwani, a northeastern suburb of Bombay.
