Bombs kill 64 on India train bound for Pakistan

Reuters/NY Times:

Two bombs exploded aboard a train bound from India to Pakistan burning to death at least 64 passengers, officials said on Monday, with India's government labeling the attack ``an act of terror.''

Most of the victims were Pakistanis but included some Indians, officials said.

Two other unexploded homemade bombs were also found on the train and the track, with television pictures showing one of them, a large plastic suitcase with wires and a plastic bottle attached.

Officials said the bottle contained some kind of flammable liquid and the apparent intention had been to cause a fire.

``This is what it suggests, that it was an act of terror,'' India's prime minister's spokesman, Sanjaya Baru, told Reuters.

About 50 passengers were also reported wounded. Television pictures showed blackened and gutted carriages, with the heat of the fire having peeled the paint off the carriage exteriors.

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This could well be an al Qaeda diversionary attack. Shortly after 9-11 several attempts were made by Islamic religious bigots to start a war between India and Pakistan. This attack coincides with the revelations in the NY Times of al Qaeda training camps in the tribal regions. A major dispute between Pakistan and India would divert attention from removing those camps.

The Belmont Club comments on the mass murder of non combatants on the train to Pakistan.

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Attacks on innocents have become part and parcel, even a "feature" of extended negotiations between terrorist entities and civil society. For example whenever some kind of peace initiative is attempted between Palestine and Israel, a suicide bombing is inevitably waiting in the wings. Every time the Iraqi government attempts to achieve some reconciliation between factions, a car bomb is readied in some garage to wreak carnage on an unsuspecting marketplace. Killings have become as much a part of the Peace Process as the green baize table. One may speak of the cost of war. But what of the costs of "engagement"? And at what point do they become indistinguishable?

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At what point do liberals recognize that the only way to end this war is to destroy the enemy?

Gateway Pundit has more on the bombing of the "peace" train along with a video link of the resulting fire. Bill Roggio gives his take on the bombing and who was responsible. Judith Aptor Klinghoffer gives her report from India.