A Railway Protection Force (RPF) officer uses a sniffer dog to check bags at the Chhatrapati Shivaji railway station in Mumbai, July 15, 2011. — Photo by Reuters

NEW DELHI: The death toll from this week's bombings in Mumbai rose to 19 as Mumbai police continued Saturday to systematically sift through the evidence gathered from the site of the three blasts.

A police official said teams of investigators had fanned out to at least three different cities in the country to probe the existence of terrorist outfits that may have links to the bombings.

The death toll in the blasts climbed to 19 when two injured men succumbed to their wounds, another police official said Saturday.

Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the media.

More than 100 people were still in hospitals in Mumbai being treated for wounds sustained when the bombs went off Wednesday evening.

No group has claimed responsibility for the bombings, and investigators have not named any suspects.

The teams of investigators were questioning suspected members of militant organisations in the southern cities of Bangalore and Hyderabad and the eastern city of Ranchi, one of the police officials said.

Investigators say the attack bore the hallmarks of the Indian Mujahideen, a militant group linked to Lashkar-i-Taiba that has claimed past terrorist attacks that used similar explosives.

The blasts were the deadliest terrorist attack in Mumbai since a 2008 siege in which 166 people were killed in an assault that lasted three days.

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