Mumbai blasts: 'No intelligence of attacks' 
 
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 Indian intelligence agencies had detected no threat of any impending attacks on Mumbai before three blasts shook the city on Wednesday. 
 
 Home Minister P Chidambaram said those who carried it out had "worked in a very clandestine manner". 
 
 The three near-simultaneous explosions, during Mumbai's evening rush hour, killed 18 people and injured dozens. 
 
 The attacks are the deadliest in India since 2008, when gunmen killed 165 people in a three-day raid in Mumbai. 
 
 Indian cities have been placed on high alert and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has urged the people of Mumbai "to remain calm and show a united face". 
 
 Visiting some of the attack victims in Mumbai hospitals, the prime minister vowed those responsible would be tracked down. 
 
 Continue reading the main story Analysis The authorities are not saying who they think could be behind the bomb attacks in Mumbai. Home Minister P Chidambaram says all groups hostile to India are being looked at. This obviously includes home-grown militant outfits like the Indian Mujahideen (IM), who have been blamed for a number of blasts in the past. Many security analysts already believe the explosions - possibly caused by improvised bombs - carry the fingerprints of such a group. The latest attack also raises questions about whether intelligence has again failed Mumbai, a charge Mr Chidambaram denies. He says security measures in the city have been beefed up since the 2008 attacks and local police have foiled a "number of terrorist threats" since then. But the fact that Mumbai seems to be targeted relentlessly by groups is extremely disquieting news for its residents and authorities alike. 
 
 "Perpetrators of [the] Mumbai blasts shall be pursued relentlessly and brought to justice quickly," he said. 
 
 Pakistan-based militants were blamed for the November 2008 attacks and peace efforts between the two countries were derailed. Pakistan's government was quick to condemn the latest bombings. 
 
 The United Nations also condemned the attack, describing it as "heinous". 
 
 'All leads followed' 
 
 No group has said it planted the bombs but suspicion among some officials and analysts has fallen on the Indian Mujahideen, a group which has claimed to have carried out similar attacks in the past. 
 
 "There was no intelligence regarding a militant attack in Mumbai. That is not a failure of intelligence agencies," said Mr Chidambaram. 
 
 "[We] know that perpetrators have attacked and have worked in a very, very clandestine manner, maybe a very small group that has not communicated with each other." 
 
 But he said it was too early to speculate on who might have been behind the attack. 
 
 "All groups that have capacity to carry out such terror attacks are suspect. All angles will be investigated, all leads will be followed," he told reporters. 
 
 He described the blasts as a "a co-ordinated attack by terrorists" as they occurred within minutes of one another. 
 
 All three bombs were reported within a 15-minute period, starting at around 1850 local time (1320 GMT). 
 
 Continue reading the main story Mumbai attacks April 1993 - Serial bomb blasts kill 257 people and about 700 injured 
 
 2003 - Four bomb attacks, including twin blasts on 25 August which killed 52 people 
 
 July 2006 - More than 180 people killed and hundreds wounded in seven orchestrated blasts on commuter trains 
 
 November 2008 - gunmen target six locations in Mumbai killing at least 165 people in a series of co-ordinated attacks 
 
 The biggest explosion occurred at the Opera House business district in the south of the city, in an area known as a hub for diamond traders. 
 
 One witness said he had tried to help by getting the wounded onto motorbikes to take them to hospital. 
 
 "We came outside, and the area was filled with black smoke. There were bodies lying all over the street, there was lots of blood... We saw many bodies missing arms and missing legs," Aagam Doshi told Reuters news agency. 
 
 Another blast, described by the authorities as low intensity, hit the Zaveri Bazaar, an area with many jewellery shops, also in the city's south. 
 
 The third hit the Dadar district in the city centre, known for its gold market. 
 
 Mr Chidambaram said none of the bombs had been triggered remotely. Police said they were made with ammonium nitrate, an ingredient for fertiliser. 
 
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 Federal commando, forensic and investigation teams have arrived in Mumbai to help the local police. 
 
 It is hoped security cameras at the gold market and jewellery shops where the two biggest blasts occurred will aid the investigation 
 
 The capital, Delhi, Calcutta and several other cities have been put on alert, with a police presence being stepped up at public places like malls, cinemas, parks and transport terminals. 
 
 Schools open 
 
 On Thursday, the government revised the death toll from the blasts down from 21 to 17, and said 131 people had been injured. 
 
 But rescue workers also found a severed head at one of the blast sites which had not yet been identified nor included in casualty figures, Mr Chidambaram said. 
 
 Most of Mumbai, however, began to return to normal life as dawn broke on Thursday, with vendors making their usual rounds and schools kept open despite the attack. 
 
 Mumbai has been targeted many times in recent years. 
 
 The 2008 attacks, which targeted two high-end hotels, a busy train station, a Jewish centre and other sites frequented by foreigners, were blamed on the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group. 
 
 The gunmen, nine of whom died in the raid, killed 165 people. ||||| A plain-clothed policeman surveys the aftermath at the site of an explosion near the Opera House in Mumbai July 13, 2011. 
 
 MUMBAI Police sifted through forensic evidence and security camera footage and questioned members of a home-grown Islamist militant group for clues to the worst bomb blasts in Mumbai since Pakistan-based militants attacked the financial hub in 2008, officials said on Thursday. 
 
 There has so far been no claim of responsibility for setting off three near-simultaneous improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which were packed with ammonium nitrate during evening rush hour on Wednesday, killing 18 people. 
 
 "There was no intelligence regarding a militant attack in Mumbai. That is not a failure of intelligence agencies," Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram told a news conference. 
 
 "(We) know that perpetrators have attacked and have worked in a very, very clandestine manner." 
 
 He said it was too early to point the finger at a particular group, but said the "coordinated terror attacks" could be in retaliation to a number of plots recently stopped by police or arrests, including from the Indian Mujahideen. 
 
 The home ministry said in a statement police were interrogating some Indian Mujahideen members who were arrested some days before the attack, but it had no specific leads on who could be responsible. 
 
 The Indian Mujahideen is a shadowy home-grown militant group known for its city-to-city bombing campaigns using small explosive devices planted in restaurants, at bus stops and on busy streets. 
 
 The group has been accused of ties to Pakistani militant groups involved in attacks in Indian Kashmir as well as elsewhere in the country. 
 
 "It's very likely coordinated by Indian Mujahideen looking at the severity and scale of the attacks -- in the past they've used tiffin carrier bombs and IEDs," said Rohan Gunaratna, a Singapore-based al Qaeda expert. 
 
 The bombings were the biggest attacks on Mumbai since the 2008 assaults killed 166 people, raised tensions with nuclear rival Pakistan, and left a city on edge. 
 
 After a two-year chill following the November attacks, India and Pakistan have been trying to normalise ties and later in July their foreign ministers are due to hold talks. 
 
 Pakistani leaders were swift in condemning the bombings, as was U.S. President Barack Obama. Top U.S. diplomat Hillary Clinton is also due in India for scheduled talks next week. 
 
 Any suggestion of attributing blame for the latest bombings to Pakistan-based groups would complicate a fraught relationship between the two countries, and further unravel Pakistan's ties with the United States. 
 
 "We live in the most troubled neighbourhood in the world. Pakistan and Afghanistan are the epicentre of terrorism," said Chidambaram, adding that Pakistan had still not given India support in pursuing those behind the 2008 attacks in Mumbai. 
 
 India's main opposition, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), blamed the government for its laxness towards security. 
 
 "This repeated attacks on Bombay should be viewed as a policy failure. It is not an intelligence failure," top BJP leader L.K. Advani, a former deputy prime minister, said. 
 
 Chidambaram said 18 people had died in the attacks, lowering an earlier figure of 21. He said 23 of the 131 wounded and admitted to hospitals were in a critical state. 
 
 JEWELLERY TARGETS 
 
 The blasts came as beleaguered Prime Minister Manmohan Singh struggles to get past a series of corruption scandals and a resurgent opposition that has led to policy paralysis in Asia's third largest economy. A cabinet reshuffle this week was criticised as too little, too late. 
 
 Singh left for Mumbai on Thursday evening, but details of his visit were not immediately available. 
 
 Mumbai, a coastal city of 20 million people that is home to India's main stock exchanges, has a long history of deadly bombings and Wednesday's attacks did not rattle financial markets. 
 
 The bombings were centered mainly on south Mumbai's bustling jewellery market districts, crowded with diamond and precious metals traders and artisans. 
 
 The blasts occurred at rush hour at about 6.45 pm (1315 GMT) on Wednesday within minutes of each other. One bomb was placed at the side of the road, concealed under garbage and a food cart, another hidden under an umbrella near a motorbike and a third on the roof of a bus stop. 
 
 "These IEDs were not crude devices, but it seems that they were made with some sophistication. Those who made them had prior training," Home Secretary Raj Kumar Singh told reporters. He said they were detonated with some form of timers. 
 
 He said police were investigating whether electric wires found attached to a body had anything to do with the bombs. U.K. Bansal, the country's top internal security official, did not rule out the possibility of a suicide bomber but said there was no firm evidence yet. 
 
 The biggest and deadliest blast was in the Opera House area, a crowded hub for diamond traders. Pakistani-based militants carried out the rampage in 2008 near the same area. 
 
 Another blast, also in south Mumbai, was at the Zaveri Bazaar, India's largest bullion market which was hit twice in the past. The third blast was at Dadar, in a street housing Muslim and Hindu shops in the centre of the coastal city. 
 
 (Writing by Paul de Bendern, additional reporting by James Pomfret, Annie Banerji and C.J. Kuncheria in NEW DELHI, Rosemary Arackaparambil, Rajendra Jadhav, Kaustabh Kulkarni and Jui Chakravorty in MUMBAI; Editing by Sugita Katyal)
– Cities across India are on high alert as security forces search for the culprits behind last night's deadly triple bombing in Mumbai that killed 17 people. No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, which injured scores of people, the BBC reports. "All groups that have capacity to carry out such terror attacks are suspect," India's internal security chief told reporters. "All angles will be investigated, all leads will be followed." The bombings, which hit south Mumbai's jewelry market area, were the deadliest assault on the city since a terrorist attack in 2008 killed 166 people. Police believe a homegrown Islamic terror group may have been behind yesterday's operation, sources tell Reuters, although the choice of targets has caused some newspapers to speculate that the attacks are linked to a dispute in Mumbai's criminal underworld. Hillary Clinton says she has no intention of canceling her planned trip to India next week.