2 held for blasts in India

JAIPUR (AFP) - Indian police on Wednesday arrested two men after eight near-simultaneous bombings killed 63 people and wounded 216 in the Rajasthan tourist city of Jaipur, the state's chief minister said.

"We have arrested two people and have detained several (more) people for questioning," Vasundhara Raje told a press conference.

"We have information that 63 people have died and many are injured critically," she said after the blasts ripped through crowded markets on Tuesday night. Seven women and 10 children were among the dead, Raje said. "RDX and ammonium nitrate were used. Ball-bearings were used, which have weight, and they behave like tiny missiles. Timing devices were used," she said.

"This seems to have been done by some international group," the chief minister added. Pakistan-based militants and fighting against Indian rule in Kashmir are usually blamed for such attacks.

The eight bombs were believed to have been planted on bicycles, police said, and later Wednesday they released a sketch of a suspect they wanted to question. "This is a sketch of one of the suspects who bought a bicycle from one of the cycle shops.

The owner remembers this person," police inspector general Pankaj Kumar Singh told AFP.

"All the cycles were brand new. Anyone coming to Jaipur to do such a dastardly act would not get cycles from another city. They were bought here," Singh said.

Several people, including owners of cycle shops, were being questioned.

State home minister Gulab Chand Kataria had earlier told AFP around a dozen people had been detained. "We are trying our best to unravel the conspiracy behind this dastardly attack," he said.

Among those detained in the city, which was under a day-time curfew, were one of the wounded and a rickshaw puller, a police official said.

Kataria had initially put the death toll at 80 and 200 injured while the Press Trust of India reported an "unofficial" toll of 85 dead.

Schools and government offices shut Wednesday in a day of mourning across the desert state.

"It's a terror attack. There was no (intelligence) report of this," said police director general AS Gill.

No claims of responsibility were reported.

India's junior home minister Shriprakash Jaiswal told reporters "the people responsible for these attacks have foreign connections," without naming Pakistan.

In Jaipur hospital wards and at the morgue, the dead included Hindus and Muslims, a strong minority in the city, an AFP reporter said.

Ten-year-old Kanha Mahar had gone to a temple to the Hindu deity Hanuman on a traditional day to pray to the monkey god.

Gathera and other relatives looked on in shocked silence as Mahar's body was taken off a rusty gurney, leaving behind a pool of blood.

Muhammad Farid, 29, was heading home from work when the blasts hit.

"I felt like I was hit by lightning and I couldn't really figure out what was happening," the father of five told AFP at the same hospital, a blood-stained bandage around his arm.

Several of the explosions took place along the walled city's Johari bazaar, a strip of shops housed in pink buildings that are the hallmark of Jaipur, known as the pink city.

"I heard two explosions, then a bomb went off right in front of me," said Malchand Bagoria, who runs a fruit stall opposite one of the bomb sites.

"Then I saw a woman's body go flying through the air. There were so many bodies."

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh condemned the blasts and appealed for calm, as the government issued a nationwide security alert. State borders were sealed.

World capitals from Washington to Paris and London condemned the attacks.