Bomb Blasts Rock Mumbai

Three bomb blasts hit Mumbai in the biggest attack on Indian’s financial capital since the November 2008 terrorist raid, killing at least 10 people.

The blasts occurred in the Dadar, Zaveri Bazar and Opera House neighborhoods, Home Minister P. Chidambaram said in a briefing in New Delhi today.The explosions injured more than 54 people, he said. The Mumbai police chief said 15 people had died.

Mumbai is home to Reliance Industries Ltd., which runs the world’s largest refinery complex, and Tata group, India’s biggest business group by value. The nation’s stocks and bond markets are also based in Mumbai. Today’s attack is the first in the city since Pakistani gunmen killed about 160 people in 2008.

A bomb exploded around 6:50 p.m., Jayesh Labdhi, a resident in the Opera House area, said. The blast damaged cars and motorcycles parked in the area.

The injured were taken to King Edward Memorial Hospital, Saifee Hospital and Hinduja Hospital. The Dadar bomb was placed in a grey colored Maruti Suzuki car, Times Now said, citing eyewitnesses.

‘‘We have made arrangements with extra beds, medicines and blood bottles,’’ said Ajay Jagdale, the doctor in charge at King George Hospital. At least 37 people were bought to the hospital with critical injuries, he said.

Mumbai and other major Indian cities, including New Delhi, the southern city of Hyderabad and Ahmedabad in western Gujarat state have been hit by a series of blasts over the last two decades.

Two bombs killed 52 people in the financial capital in 2003, an attack for which three people were eventually sentenced to death, including a married couple. That attack came 10 years after 1993 serial bombings that killed 257 people in the city.

While India has blamed militant groups in neighbor Pakistan or home grown Islamic outfits for most of the attacks, investigators this year charged Hindu activists for their involvement in the 2007 bombing of a Pakistan-bound train service that killed 68 people, an attack earlier blamed on Muslim extremists.

A raid on Mumbai by 10 Pakistan terrorists of the Lashkar- e-Taiba groups in 2008 collapsed five years of peace talks between the arch rivals. Ties that are only now beginning to recover.

In a shift in strategy for groups attacking India, the gunmen armed with automatic weapons and grenades targeted businessmen and tourists, a strike at the international links that helped India build the world’s second-fastest growing major economy after China.