India’s leaders placed the country on high alert and appealed for calm yesterday after multiple bombings in two main cities killed at least 47 people and injured almost 180 others.

Police also detained at least 30 people amid fears that home-grown Islamic radicals had launched an unusually sophisticated bombing campaign targeting states run by a Hindu nationalist party.

A series of 16 bombs aimed at markets, buses and hospitals left at least 47 people dead on Saturday in Ahmedabad, the capital of the western state of Gujarat and site of deadly Hindu-Muslim riots in 2002.

The attack followed eight almost simultaneous blasts on Friday, which killed two people in Bangalore, the cosmopolitan capital of the southern state of Karnataka and centre of India’s software industry.

Police found three more unexploded bombs in Ahmedabad yesterday and two more in the nearby Gujarati city of Surat, one of the world’s biggest diamond-polishing centres.

A group called the “Indian Mujahidin” e-mailed several Indian television channels a few minutes before the Ahmedabad attacks. “In the name of Allah the Indian Mujahidin strike again! Do whatever you can, within five minutes from now, feel the terror of death!” the e-mail said. The subject line said: “Await five minutes for the revenge of Gujarat” – an apparent reference to the 2002 riots that left 2,000 people dead, mostly Muslims.

The Indian Mujahidin was unheard of until November when it said that it was behind a bomb attack that killed 13 people in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

In May it also claimed responsibility for an attack that killed at least 61 people in the city of Jaipur, a tourist destination and the capital of the western state of Rajasthan.

Rajasthan, Gujarat and Karnataka are all governed by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has long been accused of discriminating against India’s estimated 151 million Muslims.

Pratibha Patil, India’s President, expressed “grief and sorrow” and also “appealed to the people of Ahmedabad to maintain peace and harmony”, her office said in a statement.

The Home Ministry said it had put the country on high alert, beefing up security at markets, airports, train stations and temples and deploying an extra 3,000 security personnel in Delhi, the capital. Shivraj Patil, the Home Minister, said: “We should not allow anybody to make use of this blast to create more terror and to create more difficulties for the people.”

India has suffered a string of multiple bomb attacks on key cities in recent years and the Government has blamed most on Islamic groups based in Pakistan with links to Pakistani intelligence services. Islamabad denies that charge. India’s Government also gave warning last week that a four-year peace process with Pakistan was “under stress” because of an upsurge in militant attacks, including a suicide attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul this month.

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