Indian police on Tuesday discovered at least ten bombs and were searching for others in a town in western Gujarat where a series of blasts killed 49 people and left 160 others wounded last weekend, Indian media reported. “We have defused seven bombs and (are) working on three more,” senior police official H.P. Singh said. He said the bombs were all found in one of Surat city's most crowded neighborhoods, but gave no details about the nature of the explosives or who could have placed them. Two car bombs were discovered in the same town Sunday, a day after a string of 16 bombings in the state's commercial capital Ahmedabad. The targets in Ahmedabad included markets, buses and hospitals treating the victims. Surat's police commissioner had asked people to stay indoors and for cinema halls and shopping centers to shut down on the weekend, but businesses were reopening Tuesday. Fears are high that the country could see more strikes after a shadowy group calling itself the “Indian Mujahideen” claimed responsibility for Saturday's bombings and warned of more attacks. The Gujarat attacks came the day after a string of bombs went off Friday in the southern tech city of Bangalore, leaving one dead and eight injured. On a visit to Ahmedabad Monday, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh vowed the government would “defeat” those behind the wave of weekend bombs. “We will rise to the challenge and I am confident we will be able to defeat these forces,” Singh told reporters after meeting victims of the attacks. But intelligence experts have questioned whether India is truly capable of preventing the terror attacks that have hit major cities with increasing frequency in recent years. After such attacks, India frequently rounds up suspects, often Muslims or immigrants, and puts the nation on “high alert,” but these moves have led to few arrests. The bombings in Ahmedabad came after security had allegedly been tightened across the country in the wake of the Bangalore explosions, underscoring how ineffective current measures are, experts say. “There is very little understanding of the techniques of counterterrorism at the political level,” wrote B. Raman, a former intelligence officer, in the Times of India daily Tuesday. “The recent blasts were the outcome of colossal intelligence failures at the central and state levels.”
