30 Dead In Gujarat Temple Attack
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[li]Bukhari warns attack can spark Hindu-Muslim violence
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[li]60 hurt, 100 trapped
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[li] Vajpayee cuts short vacation in Maldives
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[li] Bush condemns
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GANDHINAGAR, India: At least 30 people were killed and up to 60 hurt Tuesday when militants attacked devotees at a Hindu temple in India’s riot-torn western Gujarat state with guns and grenades, officials said.
The gunmen stormed the revered Akshardham temple in the Gujarat capital Gandhinagar Tuesday afternoon and opened fire indiscriminately, police and officials said. By nightfall, some 500 worshippers had been rescued by police and elite commandos who were rushed to the site, but another 100 were still feared trapped inside.
Sporadic exchanges of gunfire between the unidentified gunmen and members of the Indian security forces were still occurring late Tuesday night. Three members of the state reserve police were injured in the exchanges, an official said. The occasional loud explosion could also be heard and hundreds of policemen were deployed in a cordon around the temple.
Officials said the gunmen entered the temple complex at around 4.30 pm. The militants spoke Gujarati and wore dark clothes. Advani said according to initial information, the gunmen, armed with AK-47s and grenades, drove up to the temple complex in a car, jumped a fence and shot dead a woman nearby.
“They next shot dead a temple volunteer and then started hurling grenades,” Advani quoted a monk as saying." In a national television address, Advani said the attack was linked to controversial legislative elections in Indian-held Kashmir. “Terrorists are still inside, they are on top of the terrace of a cultural complex in the temple,” he added.
Amrish Soni, whose shirt was drenched in blood, said he had volunteered to help carry the dead and injured out of the temple. “I went in under police cover and carried out four people. One was a dead child, the others were two women and a youth who were injured,” he said. “I saw 20 to 25 bodies strewn on the ground at the back of the temple.” Family members hugged those who were brought out.
“The militants are still inside the temple,” inspector R.B. Rawal in the Gujarat state intelligence control room told Reuters.“I saw at least two people inside who are shooting from the terrace of the temple. There were at least four dead bodies inside, including those of a woman and an old man,” said Jalpin Patel after being rescued. A loud explosion was heard inside the temple complex in the early evening, but there were conflicting reports on whether or not the gunmen had seized any hostages.
Fire tenders were parked nearby while rescuers stretchered the dead and injured to waiting ambulances. More than 1,000 members of the public rushed to the temple site to watch the unfolding drama and ignored a police cordon until a sudden burst of gunfire sent them scurrying for cover.
Policemen used loudhailers to call for blood donations from the public. Security personnel were trying to steer the large crowd away from the area. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has cut short a vacation in the Maldive islands, and said he will return to India late Wednesday.
A high alert, meanwhile, was sounded in the Indian capital New Delhi and in the states of West Bengal, Gujarat, Maharastara and Tamil Nadu and security was being beefed up around key Hindu temples countrywide, federal officials said.
The attack was meantime condemned by US President George W. Bush. “The president condemns all terrorist attacks. This was a particularly deadly attack, and the president condemns it,” presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters in Washington. India’s chief Muslim cleric Ahmed Bukhari warned the bloody attack could again spark Hindu-Muslim violence in the strife-torn western state.
At least 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, died in riots that started in February and raged for three months in Gujarat, one of India’s most prosperous states. “Riots can start, there is a distinct possibility of an eruption because just three days ago we saw communal violence in Gujarat,” Bukhari, the chief of India’s largest mosque, the New Delhi-based Jama Masjid, told AFP.
Police said the raid had stoked fears of fresh communal violence, particularly in Gujarat commercial capital Ahmedabad. “There is tension and fear in Ahmedabad. People are scared that something could happen at night,” K.K. Mysorewala, duty state intelligence police inspector, told Reuters.
Akshardham Temple is a Hindu religious and cultural complex visited by some two million people annually, according to the website of the Swaminarayan sect which runs it. The imposing 10-storey pink sandstone temple houses a golden idol of Lord Swaminarayan, an 18th century Hindu monk who started the sect. Swaminarayan’s followers believe him to be an incarnation of Lord Vishnu, the Hindu god of preservation.
The sect says the monument is made entirely of 6,000 tonnes of pink sandstone, with no steel or cement used at all, to ensure it will last for a thousand years. The sect has 450 temples in 45 countries and its temple in Neasden, London is considered a landmark for its architecture.
