Punjab Cinema Blast Kills Six

An explosion yesterday ripped through a crowded cinema, killing six people and injuring dozens more in the northern Indian state of Punjab in what police described as a terrorist attack.

Hundreds of people - mainly poor, migrant workers - were crammed into the auditorium in India's industrial capital, Ludhiana, for a late-night screening of Janan Janam Ke Saath (Forever With You), a new Bollywood comedy.

Indian television showed scenes of devastation, with shattered glass spraying the cinema's foyer and bloodstains splattered over the blast area. Two men were killed instantly; another four died in hospital.

Besides Islamic militancy, the Punjab was also the scene of a bloody Sikh insurgency, started by militants demanding a separate state, in the 1980s.

Sunday's was the first bombing in seven years, putting the state on high alert, with security tightened at bus and railway stations and around government buildings.

Police sources told Indian channels the attack was most likely to have been the work of Sikh militants, either acting on their own or working with an Islamic group. Only last week, Punjabi police uncovered 500kg of high-intensity explosive.

KPS Gill, a former director of police in the state, told the Indian Express his instinct was that Sikh groups were behind the bomb but that Islamic groups "could not be ruled out since militants groups in Punjab and in Jammu and Kashmir have been in touch in the past".

The blast was the second apparent attack in a week in northern India.

Days earlier, three people died in an explosion at a 12-century Muslim shrine in the neighboring state of Rajasthan.

No one has claimed responsibility for either attack. Indian newspapers said police had interrogated Indian and Bangladeshi pilgrims over the bombing of the Muslim shrine but had so far made no arrests.

Indian police said the country was preparing for the main Hindu festival season, which begins this week with Dussehra, marking the triumph of good over evil.