INNOCENTS

Mrs Raje also said that the bombs used in the attack were a mix of plastic RDX explosive, ammonium nitrate and ball-bearings that acted like tiny missiles once the devices were detonated.

Officials and witnesses said these ball bearings, which were yesterday still embedded in walls and doors in areas where the blasts took place, were largely responsible for the fatalities.

Officials said the bombs were all tied to newly purchased bicycles and scattered in a 500 yard arc around the busy market place that is the hub of Jaipur’s emerald and gold market and the city’s principal commercial centre. They were detonated within a 20-minute period beginning at 7.20pm.

Investigations had revealed that all the bicycles had been bought locally in Jaipur.

"They (the bombs) were ensured to inflict the maximum damage at a time when the market was packed,” said R S Malik, a banker who witnessed one of the explosions near a Hindu temple. It was meticulously planned and diabolically executed, he added.

"Jaipur’s fate is now sealed as it has become the terrorists’ target,” said Sanjay Bhatia, who was speaking from his bed in a local hospital, where he was carried after first being given up for dead. Its future is bleak, he lamented.


...Police in Jaipur imposed a day-long curfew in the city, an apparent attempt to avert clashes between Hindus and Muslims. Most shops remained shut and there was an increased police presence on the streets.

In the hospitals it was clear that both communities lost lives, as television pictures showed family members searching for loved ones in the morgues...

In Charlie Wilson's War the CIA agent Gust Avarakotos tells of organising for Jihadi types at war with the Russians in Afghanistan to learn the bicycle bomb from the Egyptian Military. Jaipur and nearby Ajmer have large Muslim populations. There seem to be two types of Jihadi's. Defensive and offensive. Offensive Jihadis fuck things up for defensive Jihadis. Maybe they mean to. Maybe they want to provoke all Muslims to be involved in a Holy war with the world and provoke the world to be at war with them. At the moment both our government and the American government are choosing to be blind to the difference between offensive and defensive Jihadis to our greater peril, but then again- How do you tell the difference by looking?

Screams, silence as families collect bodies of Jaipur blast victims
High alert; experts off to Jaipur
Two arrested after India bomb blasts kill 63


via Rachel here

Gill Hicks is a co-founder of the Walk Talk event, which will start in Leeds on 19 July and end a month later. She hopes people will join in "to meet, walk and talk with each other about matters of belief and conscience". Three of the four suicide bombers, who killed 52 people and injured nearly 800 in London in 2005, had links to Leeds. The walk will first head to the Beeston area of Leeds where bombers Shehzad Tanweer and Hasib Hussain lived and where their leader, Mohammed Sidique Khan, had many connections...

...Local people will be encouraged to join WalkTalk at locations along the route and the team aims to focus attention on projects which are already fostering local community cohesion.

Ms Hicks said: "During my time in hospital it became very clear what I should do with my life.

"I needed to make a significant difference - to work at building peace and reconciliation and to deter anyone who is thinking of following a path towards violent action."