JOIN USUP bomb blast claims five
Five people, including children and women, were killed and over a dozen others injured, some seriously, in a crude bomb explosion that ripped through a congested slum in Kareli area of Uttar Pradesh’s Allahabad town, about 200 km from here, on Wednesday. Eyewitness accounts put the death toll at six.
According to police sources, the blast occurred in a garbage dump adjacent to a slum around 4 pm. Eyewitness accounts said the children, who were playing there, and some women ragpickers were hit by splinters.
Situated close to river Yamuna and surrounded by the Muslim-dominated Kareli township, the slum has a reputation of being a veritable manufacturing centre of crude bombs and country-made weapons, according to sources in police department and the district administration.
Police suspect a crude bomb to have set off the blast though they were unable to immediately qualify its intensity. “We are investigating...the cause can be identified only after a probe”, a senior police official said. The injured were rushed to nearby hospitals, police said. At least five of the injured were in a critical condition, and the toll could rise.
The government has sounded a statewide alert. Union Home Ministry sources ruled out any terror angle although a UP Anti-Terrorist Squad team and forensic experts have been sent to Allahabad.
Compensation
The slum dwellers claimed that the blast could be the handiwork of a construction company interested in acquiring the land occupied by squatters. Home Ministry sources endorsed the view.
Superintendent of Police (Crime), Allahabad, Arun Kumar Pande said the blast was “prima facie the result of rag-pickers fiddling with a crude bomb that might have been left in a garbage heap”.
According to the District Information Office, Allahabad, compensation of Rs 1 lakh has been announced for the family members of each of the deceased, Rs 50,000 for those who sustained serious injuries and Rs 20,000 for those with minor wounds.