By IANS
Guwahati : Five people were killed and 52 wounded in two powerful bomb blasts in Assam Sunday evening, while two more explosions damaged natural gas and crude oil pipelines, officials said.
A police spokesman said the first blast took place around 6.00 p.m. near a Hindu temple in the eastern town of Tinsukia, about 510 km east of Assam’s main city of Guwahati.
“About 27 people were injured in the blast, most of them either temple-goers or evening shoppers. The bomb was probably concealed in a bag and kept on a parked bicycle,” Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta, deputy inspector general of Assam Police, told IANS by telephone.
The injured were shifted to a local hospital with multiple wounds.
“The condition of at least 12 of them is stated to be critical,” the police official said.
Three of the critically injured succumbed late in the evening.
The second blast took place around the same time near a cinema hall in the adjoining town of Doomdooma, killing two and wounding 28, including two paramilitary troopers.
“In all probability, the rebel bomber (from the United Liberation Front of Asom – ULFA) who was carrying the explosive in a motorcycle, died in the blast. A civilian was also killed,” a police official who declined to be identified said by telephone from Doomdooma.
“The condition of five of the injured is said to be critical.”
ULFA insurgents also triggered a powerful explosion on a pipeline transporting natural gas to tea gardens near Velukajan in Dibrugarh district, about 470 km east of here.
“The blast ripped apart the pipeline and a massive fire erupted soon after. The fire has since been brought under control after gas supply was stopped,” an Assam Gas Company Limited official said.
The fourth blast blew up a crude oil pipeline belonging to the state-owned Oil India Ltd near village Lankasi in the eastern Dibrugarh district, about 460 km from here, at around 10 p.m.
“Details of the blast are awaited as the location is very remote,” a senior OIL official said.
Police blamed the four blasts on the outlawed ULFA, a rebel group fighting for an independent homeland since 1979. The ULFA was earlier blamed for a string of attacks and explosions in Assam since January in which about 120 people were killed, most of them Hindi-speaking migrant workers.