CAIRO, October 30, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The shuddering blasts that killed dozens in New Delhi yesterday are not the work of a Kashmiri group but rather a terrorist outfit, which aims to throw a spanner in the recent signs of rapprochement between India and Pakistan, an Indian analyst said on Sunday, October 30.

"Kashmiri groups only attack the army, intelligence people and police; not innocent civilians," Zafrul-Islam Khan, the editor-in-chief of the Milli Gazette and Muslim India told IslamOnline.net over the phone from New Delhi.

Saturday's blasts hit a bus and two markets crowded with thousands of shoppers getting ready for Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights on November 1, turning a night of celebration into a scene of mayhem and bloodshed as at least 61 people were killed and injured 188.

The explosions occurred within about 20 minutes of each other.

"Al-hamdu lillah (all praise be to Allah), the death toll could have been much higher as police defused a fourth bomb in a crowded market," Khan added.

He said a fifth explosive device went off when the driver of a bus tried to check it after ordering some 100 passengers on board to get off.

Khan discredited reports that a Kashmiri group calling itself "Inquilab" (Revolution), was behind the deadly blasts.

"I have never heard about this group," Khan said emphatically. "It might be a new name of well-known Pakistani militant groups operating in Indian Kashmir."

"Someone called newspapers in Srinagar in Indian Kashmir this morning and claimed he was the spokesman for this group," he said.

Ahmed Yar Gaznavi, who spoke to the Kashmir News Service as the group's spokesman, claimed the three blasts.

"Such attacks will continue until India pulls out all its troops from the state (of Kashmir) and stops inhuman activities in the state," he said in statements carried by Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Khan said the blasts bear the hallmarks of Pakistani groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, which would not mind targeting Hindus.

Lashkar-e-Taiba is one of a dozen separatist groups waging a war against Indian rule in Kashmir since 1989.

Lashkar was also blamed by India for an attack on India's parliament in December 2001 which left 15 people dead, including five attackers.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf banned Lashkar and Jaish-e-Mohammad in 2002 as part of a crackdown on militant groups.

Khan said the blasts came to derail peace efforts in Kashmir as they came just hours before India and Pakistan finalized a deal to open up their de facto border in the disputed province to ease aid efforts after the October 8 earthquake, which devastated Pakistan.

Home Minister Shivraz Patil said Sunday after a cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that investigations were going well.

"We have lots of information with us. But please don't pressurise us to disclose. We will not comment," Patil said. "Our assessment is that they (investigators) are doing well."

Kashmir is divided between nuclear-armed rivals Pakistan and India but claimed by both in full. They have fought two of their three wars over the disputed Himalayan region.

Both countries came close to a third war in 2002 after India moved its forces on the Pakistani border following an attack on the Indian parliament in late 2001.