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PUNE, India - A bomb ripped through a restaurant popular with tourists in the western Indian city of Pune on Saturday, killing nine people and casting a shadow over the resumption of Indo-Pakistan peace talks.
At least one foreigner -- believed to be a Taiwanese national -- was among the dead, according to Pune Police Commissioner Satyapal Singh, who said 45 people had been injured, some of them seriously.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast, which India's Home Minister P. Chidambaram described as "a significant terrorist incident".
"All the evidence points to a deliberate plot," Chidambaram said.
It was the first major attack on Indian soil since the November 2008 Mumbai massacre -- blamed on the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group -- which had prompted New Delhi to suspend dialogue with Islamabad.
The South Asian rivals had agreed just last week to resume talks, and the Pune blast triggered immediate opposition calls for that decision to be reviewed.
The bomb went off in the German Bakery -- an established eatery in the Koregaon Park area of the city -- at about 7:30 pm (1400 GMT).
"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," Indian Home Secretary G.K. Pillai told reporters in New Delhi.
An eyewitness interviewed by the CNN-IBN news channel described a scene of carnage, with body parts littered around the immediate site of the blast.
"There is no German Bakery anymore," he said. "There were bodies everywhere. We tried to help carry them into the ambulances."
Pune is about 100 kilometres (60 miles) southeast of Mumbai and the blast carried certain echoes of the 2008 attack on India's financial capital by 10 Islamist gunmen that killed 166 people.
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 bakery was also close to 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: "Everyone here is OK. We are on the same street. We are some minutes walk away. We heard the bomb."
The Mumbai assault was 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.
Prakash Jawadekar, a spokesman for the main opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, said the government should now reconsider the resumption of talks with Pakistan which has been scheduled for February 25.
"Terror and talks cannot go together" Jawadekar told reporters after visiting the blast site in Pune.
- AFP /ls
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