The rush-hour attacks on one of the world’s most populous and chaotic cities sent hundreds of thousands of commuters fleeing from suburban stations, most on to the streets and even motorways in panic, as mobile phone lines jammed after the blasts that targeted stations along the city’s busy western rail line.

The first attack took place at 6.24pm (11.54am GMT) with the others following in quick succession. Although there were no immediate claims of responsibility, the most likely suspects were considered to be Islamic extremists opposed to Indian control of Kashmir.Heavy monsoon rains gripped Bombay late last night, flooding streets and even the entrances to big hospitals as, in the absence of ambulances and a co-ordinated rescue effort, members of the public carried the dying and wounded to police stations and clinics in a desperate search for help.

In what seemed to be a chilling repeat of the attacks on the London Underground last year and Atocha station in Madrid, in 2004, hundreds of injured passengers were thrown on to the tracks by the force of the bombs, and many of the injured were left horribly mutilated by shrapnel wounds.

In one appalling scene, a middle-aged man, one leg severed from his body by the blast, reached out in the rain for help and was later carried from the twisted rail sidings by two fellow passengers. Around him dazed commuters, many in bloodstained clothes, walked down the line holding each other up, crying and screaming in anger, pain and confusion.

Others helped to carry the dead on to nearby platforms. The date of the attack, 11/7, also carried echoes of the London bombings of 7/7, the New York attacks of 9/11 and the Madrid attack of 11/3.

Hours after the blasts, ambulances were still racing to hospitals with what seemed to be an endless number of the injured and the dead. “I’ve been here for hours taking the bodies inside,” Bunty Jain, 24, a shopkeeper helping out at the city’s Kem hospital, said.

“Some of them have no eyes, no hands, no arms,” he added. “They’ve been destroyed.”

Television footage showed dazed commuters with blood dripping from gaping wounds being carried by fellow travellers to waiting ambulances near Mahim station. Others tried frantically to call their relatives on mobile telephones. One young man sat in a Metro station with blood streaming down his face. Another young Continued from previous page

man buried his face in a white handkerchief and wept.

Shoes, handbags, clothes and other items littered the area. Bodies sprawled on the tracks were carried away in sheets as firefighters scoured train wreckage at Matunga station.

“The seven incidents all took place in the space of ten minutes. It appears to be pre-planned. The apparently coordinated blasts happened at packed railway stations or on trains in the Matunga, Khar, Mahim, Jogeshwari, Borivali and Bhayendar localities. A seventh hit a subway,” Anil Sharma, chief security commissioner of Bombay’s Western Railway, said.

D. K. Shankaran, chief secretary of the state of Maharashtra, of which Bombay is the capital, said that an eighth bomb had failed to go off at a busy station. “The blasts happened when the trains were most crowded and were clearly targeted to kill as many people as possible,” he said. “These attacks were designed to kill thousands of people. They knew the carriages would be packed with 200 people each. It is astonishing that so may have survived.”

The blasts were at stations across the western suburbs, which are linked to the city’s office and business districts by a train network used by more than six million people each day.

Survivors last night told of huge explosions. “We heard a loud blast in one of the train compartments. When we rushed there and looked, we saw people with severed limbs and grievous injuries,” one said.

Bombay has been hit by dozens of bomb blasts in the past decade. When more than 250 people died in 1993 explosions, authorities blamed the city’s underworld, largely Muslim, criminal gangs. Those attacks came after the demolition of a mosque in the Hindu holy city of Ayodhya. Simmering sectarian tensions since have kept India’s intelligence services on constant alert in the city.

Some analysts said last night that India’s recently improved relations with the US, culminating in an agreement to share nuclear technology, could have given Muslim extremists extra impetus to attack. “Anybody seen to be part of the US camp automatically becomes a target” of Muslim extremists, Ashok Mehta, a security analyst, said.

In London hundreds of Hindus gathered at the Swaminarayan Hindu temple in Neasden last night to pray for the victims. Festival celebrations at the Shri Swaminarayan temple in Leicester were cancelled.

The Hindu Forum of Britain is organising a gathering on Friday evening at the ISKON temple near Watford, when more than 150 people, with representatives from all faiths, will light candles in remembrance.

CONTACT NUMBERS

The Indian High Commission in London said that it had received many calls from relatives. It is advising them to ring the incident control room in Bombay on 00 91 2222 00 5388

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