Quotes of the Day

In the grim, brief history of modern terror, there was little special about last Saturday's serial bomb attacks in New Delhi that killed at least 55, save this: there may never have been softer targets. Police—who received a warning of the attacks 20 minutes before the initial blast—said the first bomb was driven by scooter or rickshaw into Paharganj, a run-down food-and-clothes bazaar containing a handful of backpacker hostels. The second was planted in the Sarojini Nagar market, a ramshackle collection of open-air stalls crammed with knock-off designer wear and cheap plastic knick-knacks. Both areas were favorites of lower-middle-class Indians. And when the devices were detonated, between 5:30 and 6:00 p.m., both places were packed with families of all faiths buying gifts, fireworks and fairy lights on the last shopping day before the Hindu festival of Diwali, the Festival of Light. Sixteen died in Paharganj, 39 in Sarojini Nagar. A third explosion, on a bus in Okhla, south Delhi, reportedly killed three. "I saw one child, not more than six months old, its body split by the blast," said Paharganj handicrafts store-owner Neeraj Chawla. "And there was a family of shoppers. All dead, a mother and her children, lying on the ground with their arms apart. That's why I'm covered with blood. All the shop-owners rushed to pick them up."

A senior Indian intelligence officer told TIME the coordination (police defused two further devices), planning and suspected use of RDX explosive pointed to Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), a Pakistan-based group with ties to al-Qaeda that carries out regular attacks in Indian-administered Kashmir and across India. LET was behind a gun attack on the Indian Parliament in New Delhi in December 2001, and linked to a twin bomb attack on India's financial capital, Bombay, in August 2003. While last week's bombs were likely to have been too long in the planning to be an attempt to disrupt Indo-Pak relief cooperation in the wake of the Kashmir earthquake, they will inevitably dampen the spirit of reconciliation the disaster was beginning to engender. "This is part of LET's overall tactic," said the officer. "To hit everyone everywhere."

• Alex Perry
• A series of coordinated bombings kill dozens in New Delhi on the eve of a major holiday