May 16, 2008	Friday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 10, 1429

JAIPUR, May 15: A previously unknown Muslim militant group claimed on Thursday to have carried out deadly bombings in Jaipur by planting bicycles packed with explosives on the city’s crowded streets, police said.

The claim was reportedly made in videos and an e-mail sent to Indian television stations, said Pankaj Singh, the city’s inspector-general of police.

He said investigators were examining the video clips, which showed a bicycle with an alleged bomb strapped to it parked in a crowded market.

“There is certain factual information in the e-mail. We will be corroborating that to see if that’s accurate,” he said without elaborating.

Investigators believe most of the bombs were placed in bags left on bicycles, which police have traced to two shops in Jaipur’s old city.

Police have also released a sketch of a man in his early 20s who is suspected of buying the bicycles, and have questioned nearly a dozen people. But no arrests have been made, Singh said.

A group calling itself the ‘Indian Mujahideen’ claimed responsibility for the bombings in the two video clips and an e-mail, Singh said. They also made the claim in an e-mail sent to the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, which governs the state of Rajasthan, where Jaipur is located, the CNN-IBN television news channel reported.

In the e-mail, the group demanded India stop working with the United States and Britain, CNN-IBN said. The e-mail also says Jaipur, a city of pink-hued palaces that is popular with Indian and foreign tourists, was targeted to disrupt the tourism industry. There have been no reports of foreigners killed or wounded in the attack.

The e-mail was sent from an Internet cafe in Sahibabad, a town just outside New Delhi, using an account created this week through the British domain of Yahoo, Singh said. The café’s owner was being questioned, he added.—AP