At least five bomb blasts have rocked the city of Bangalore, India’s technology hub, killing one person and injuring at least 15 in the latest in a series of attacks on commercial and tourist centres.

Police said that the “low intensity” bombs went off between 2pm and 2.45pm local time today at different points in a nine-mile radius across the capital of the southern state of Karnataka.

Bangalore is the centre of India’s software outsourcing industry and is home to around 1,500 top firms, including Infosys, Wipro and the Indian operations of Microsoft, Intel and IBM.

One blast was in the business district, while the others were in the southern suburbs. The city contains six million people, and is one of India’s most cosmopolitan and religiously diverse.

"In all these cases they have created the blast using timer devices," Shankar Bidri, Bangalore’s Commissioner of Police told reporters at the site of one of the blasts. "Explosives have also been used, in quantity equal to one or two grenades," he said.

Other police officials said that the bombs used gelignite, also known as blasting gelatin, as an explosive and were packed with nuts and bolts to try to maximise casualties. Some police officials said that there were five blasts, while others said that there were seven.

Indian television showed police with sniffer dogs sifting through the wreckage of a small shopping stall, whose windows and concrete floors were smashed by one of the explosions.

"I was on my way to the office when we heard a noise," Arun Daniel, a witness, told the CNN-IBN TV channel. "It sounded like a cracker. The traffic was blocked, everyone was running around. It was not a severe blast."

Some IT firms, as well as schools, colleges and cinemas, closed after the blasts. Police said that no one had claimed responsibility for the attack.

India has suffered a wave of bombings in the past decade, most of which have been blamed on Islamic militant groups with links to either Pakistan or Bangladesh.

In the last two years many attacks have involved multiple simultaneous bombs in cities of commercial or cultural significance.

In July 2006 more than 180 people were killed in seven bomb explosions at railway stations and on trains in Bombay — India’s financial capital.

In August last year, three explosions at an amusement park and a street-side food stall killed at least 40 people in Hyderabad — another IT hub.

In May this year, seven bombs in markets and outside Hindu temples killed at least 63 people in the western city of Jaipur, a popular tourist destination in the state of Rajasthan.

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