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PUNE, India : Eight people were killed and 32 injured in a bomb blast Saturday at a restaurant popular with tourists in the western Indian city of Pune, police and government officials said.
The blast took place at about 7:30 pm (1400 GMT) at the German Bakery -- an established eatery in the Koregaon Park area of the city, not far from a Jewish cultural centre and an internationally renowned religious retreat.
"It was a bomb blast," Indian Home Secretary G.K. Pillai told reporters in New Delhi, adding that one foreigner was among the eight people killed.
"It appears that an unattended package was noticed... by one of the waiters who apparently went and attempted to open the package when the blast took place," Pillai said.
He added that a specialist forensic team was flying from New Delhi to assist the state police of Maharashtra, where Pune is located.
Pillai was quoted earlier by PTI as saying that it was a terror attack.
It was the first major attack on Indian soil since the November 2008 assault by Islamist gunmen on the Maharashtra state capital, Mumbai, which India blamed on the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group.
Pune is about 100 kilometres (60 miles) southeast of Mumbai.
The Mumbai attacks prompted India to suspend peace talks with Pakistan and the Pune blast came just days after the two sides agreed to resume a dialogue.
The German Bakery is only 200 yards (metres) from an ashram, or religious retreat, specialising in meditation courses run by a Swiss-based firm Osho International.
Pillai noted that David Headley, a US-Pakistani national awaiting trial in the United States for allegedly scouting out possible targets in the Mumbai attacks, is believed to have stayed in the ashram on a trip to Pune.
Headley, 49, has pleaded not guilty to 12 terrorism-related charges and remains in custody in Chicago.
The chief minister of Maharashtra state, Ashok Chavan, called for calm.
"We have to be cautious. We have to be alert. There's no reason to be panicky about the situation," he said.
Anti-terrorism squad detectives and forensic experts have begun an investigation to determine the cause of the explosion, police said.
The German Bakery is located near Chabad House, a Jewish cultural and religious centre run by the orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch movement whose members were targeted in the Mumbai attacks.
Rabbi Betzalel Kupchik, from Pune Chabad House, told AFP by telephone: "Everyone here is OK. We are on the same street. We are some minutes walk away. We heard the bomb."
The Mumbai attacks were carried out by 10 Islamist extremists who stormed a number of high profile sites, including two luxury hotels, the city's main railway station and a popular restaurant.
A total of 166 people were killed, including 25 foreigners, and more than 300 others injured in a 60-hour orgy of violence.
The attacks' sole surviving gunman, Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, is currently on trial at a high security prison court in Mumbai, charged with a raft of offences, including "waging war against India," murder and attempted murder.
- AFP /ls
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