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Dehli bomb blast

Kashmir,Sikh groups

claim reponsibility

NEW DELHI: Kashmir and Sikh separatists said on Sunday they had set off a powerful bomb that destroyed a lodging house in the Indian capital, killing at least 14 people, five of them foreigners, and injuring 37.

A joint statement from the Islami Harkat-ul-Momineen and the Khalistan Liberation Force distributed to newspapers in Srinagar, summer capital of the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir, said the bomb in the crowded district of Paharganj on Saturday night had been triggered by remote control.

"Some anti-movement activists including some foreigners of friendly neighbouring countries of India were holding a meeting when the bomb was exploded killing all of them," the statement said.

Police said the toll from the explosion, which brought down much of the four-storey Arjun Guest House that local residents said was frequented by Kashmiris, had risen to 14.

They said three Nigerian men, a Dutchman and a European woman whose nationality was not yet known, were killed in the blast, and three foreign men -- a Briton, a Dutchman and a Nigerian -- were injured. Their names were not released.

The blast, one of the deadliest in the city's history, occurred a week before the start of India's general election.

The separatist statement said the bombing was part of an attempt to stop the elections taking place in Jammu and Kashmir, predominantly Hindu India's only Moslem-majority state, where more than 20,000 people have been killed in a six-year separatist insurgency.

"We have vowed to fight till last to stop India's plan to stage election drama," the statement said.

Police and rescue services toiled through the night to free bodies trapped in the debris of the 25-room boarding house in Paharganj, an area of cheap hotels and narrow lanes near Connaught Place, the capital's central square.

Witnesses said parts of the building, situated in a narrow street and frequented by Kashmiris, collapsed on people below.

The Press Trust of India (PTI) news agency said three Kashmiris were killed in the blast. A shoe shop on the ground floor of the building was open to customers when the bomb went off, the United News of India (UNI) news agency said.

"Eight of us were sitting in a room when the lights went out and there was a loud blast. We immediately rushed to the balcony and jumped down from the first floor," Zohar Afaqwani, a 22-year-old Kashmiri resident, told reporters at the hospital where he was being treated.

Some residents watching the rescue operations shouted anti-Kashmiri slogans, UNI said.

The blast was the fifth in New Delhi since last September. The previous explosions, which police said were also the work of Kashmiri and Sikh separatists, killed seven people and injured nearly 100.

Bomb experts told UNI that 20 to 30 kg (45 to 65 lb) of explosives caused Saturday's blast. Police mounted raids across the city in search of suspected militants but made no arrests, the agency said.

Witnesses saw bleeding victims, including at least four Westerners, pulled from the debris. Shoes from the shoe shop lay scattered on the mounds of rubble that clogged the narrow street.

Guesthouses in the area are popular among foreign backpackers.-Reuter