One dead in India blast

NEW DELHI (AFP) - At least one person was killed and six injured Monday in an explosion in India's western Gujarat state, the Press Trust of India reported.

The Indian news channel Times Now reported two people killed and 13 wounded, and said the blast originated from a motorcycle and hit a marketplace.

"There has been an explosion in Modasa town but we are yet to confirm how it took place. Bomb and dog squads have been rushed to the site," District Superintendent of Police R.B. Bhrambhatt told PTI.

The low-intensity blast, which took place in the state's Sabarkantha district, resembled a bomb explosion in a New Delhi marketplace on Saturday which killed two people and wounded 22 others, officials were quoted as saying.

Several Indian cities - Jaipur, Bangalore, Ahmedabad and New Delhi - have been hit by serial bombings since May, all of them claimed by a militant group called the Indian Mujahideen.

The Indian government recently unveiled new security measures to tackle what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said were "vast gaps" in intelligence gathering.

The latest blast came hours after police in Gujarat's commercial capital Ahmedabad found 17 "crude explosive devices" dumped in rubbish.

But police told PTI that they did not believe an organised militant group was responsible for making the crude devices.

Ahmedabad was hit by a string of 16 bombs on July 27 that killed 45 and injured over 160. Gujarat state, ruled by the Hindu nationalist opposition, is considered particularly sensitive because it was the scene of serious rioting in 2002, when an estimated 2,000 people " mostly Muslims " were killed by Hindu mobs taking revenge for a train blaze that killed scores of Hindu pilgrims.