VARANASI (India), March 9: A previously unknown militant group claimed responsibility on Thursday for blasts that killed 23 people here as relatives cremated the dead.

The group Lashkar-i-Kahar told a news agency in Indian-held Kashmir that it had staged Tuesday’s blasts.

“We have carried out the attacks,” a man identifying himself as Abdul Jabbar, the group’s spokesman, told Current News Service in a telephone call.

He threatened more attacks if “India does not stop atrocities against Kashmiri Muslims”.

Police in Srinagar said they had never heard of the group, whose name translates as “Army of the Imperious,” but were taking the claim seriously and had begun investigations.

The claim came as relatives of people killed in the triple blasts in the temple town in northern Uttar Pradesh state cremated the dead.

Men and women sobbed and priests read from Hindu scriptures on the banks of the River Ganges as mutilated corpses were piled on funeral pyres.

“I cradled him in my arms when he was a little baby and now these same hands will light the pyre of my only child,” a father cried out at a cremation embankment along the river.

Sixty-eight people were also injured in the late-night blasts. Some of the bodies were mutilated beyond recognition.

“Eight bodies have not yet been identified so far,” Varanasi’s chief civilian administrator Ramesh Gokad told AFP.

“The situation has more or less returned to normal,” police chief Navneet Sikera said.—AFP