Bangalore trembles with serial bomb blasts

Bangalore trembles with serial bomb blasts

A series of bomb blasts took place in Bangalore in the afternoon today. The first blast took place at Madiwala checkpost, killing one and injuring several others. The total death toll has presently reached five..

WITHIN A span of an hour serial bomb blasts shook the ’Electronic City’, Bangalore today. With news trickling in and reporters live on spot, information presently available is that a series of bomb blasts took place at Nayandahallil, Annapanya and Madiwala.

The first blast was at a checkpost in Madiwala around 1:30pm, in which reportedly a woman was killed and several injured. Several blasts followed within gaps of 15 minutes.

The blasts were of a low intensity and crude bombs with timers were used. Bomb squads were rushed to the blast sites.

More news is awaited regarding the blasts and the death toll but as last reported the death toll had reached five and four injured. All telephone lines have been jammed and panic is rampant. The police and other officials have asked the people not to panic. Rescue work is going on and all the injured were rushed to the Mallya Hospital.

High alert has been sounded in Delhi and Mumbai.

Bomb blasts in Bangalore: A summary and thoughts on communication infrastructure

There were 7 bomb blasts (602 pm update: 8 blasts) from 120 pm to 235 in Bangalore: Madiwala, Mysore Road, Audogodi, Koramangala, Vittal Mallya Road, Nayandanahalli and Richmond Road (Shivaji nagar).

2 people died and 4 were injured. (Updated at 545 pm local time - 1 person is claimed dead and 6 injured)

They were fairly small blasts apparently meant to cause panic and fear.

I found out about this from twitter 3 minutes after the blast and since then have been twittering with what information I have available.

Nearly 2 hours after the blast the city pretty much shutdown. Offices closed and everyone was asked to go home. Since nothing of this ever happened in Bangalore before, everyone pretty much panicked.

(Updated at 545 pm local time - Bangalore is returning to normal with traffic worse than usual at the locations of the blast). People are returning to normal and the panic seems to have settled down.

Since two of the blasts were nearly telecom posts, mobile communication was shut down for voice.

Text message (SMS) services were working fine. Calls to US (I called my sister and others) were working fine. Local calls were unable to go through.

All roads leading to and from the main downtown area (M. G. Road) were pretty much closed.

A perspective:

1. For communication: the Internet rocks in India - twitter stayed pretty much stable throughout.

2. Text message beats voice calls during emergency.

3. Local news providers were absolutely useless in getting information out. There was more nonsense and speculation on the motive and the reason for the blasts than real facts. Television did work, but it was useless information that was being transmitted.