By IRNA
New Delhi : Andhra Pradesh government today blamed international terrorist organizations based in Bangladesh and Pakistan for the twin blasts in the city that claimed 24 lives.
“As things stand today, the available information points to the involvement of international terrorist organizations in Bangladesh and Pakistan,” Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy told reporters at Hyderabad, capital city of Andhra Pradesh, after an emergency meeting of the state cabinet, Indian national TV news portal reported here.
Rejecting a suggestion that the near simultaneous blasts were a result of intelligence failure, Reddy said, “Most of the times, external terrorist organizations are responsible for such ghastly acts.
The state government will not have the wherewithal to go into this sort of intelligence operations.
“We cannot have intelligence networks in Bangladesh and Pakistan,” he said.
He blamed terrorist organizations in Bangladesh and Pakistan for the explosion that had occurred in Mecca Masjid in the city in May last.
He said no arrests have been made so far in connection with Saturday’s blasts.
The Chief Minister announced an ex-gratia of Rs 5 lakhs to each family of the blast victims, a government job to the families who lost their bread earners and Rs 02,000 for the injured.
The Chief Minister put the death toll at 40, including seven engineering students from Nasik in Maharashtra, two railway policemen from Madhya Pradesh, six women and three children.
Earlier, the Cabinet has unanimously passed a resolution condemning the “cowardly act” and conveyed its condolences to the bereaved families.
The week-end outing at the popular Gokul Chat shop at Kothi locality turned into a tragedy when a deafening explosion ripped through it killing 24 people and injuring 100, police said.
Five minutes earlier, 10 people, most of them from outside the state, were killed and 92 injured in another blast in an open air auditorium in Lumbini Park near the state secretariat in the heart of the city when a laser show was underway, they said.