| Twenty-four people died when an explosion ripped through Gokul Chat Shop at Kothi locality at around 7.50 pm, Andhra Pradesh Home Minister K Jana Reddy told reporters here. In another blast five minutes earlier at a place 5 km away, six people were killed in an auditorium in Lumbini Park near the state secretariat in the heart of the city, when a laser show was on, he said. |
| Reddy said about 500 people were in the auditorium at the time of the incident. |
| The blast ripped through the middle row of the auditorium when the show had just begun. |
| So powerful was the blast that some of the bodies were flung into the air and scattered over the area. |
| Confirming the number of deaths as based on preliminary information, Reddy termed the blasts the handiwork of terrorists. |
| Hyderabad Police Commissioner Balwinder Singh said the toll at Lumbini Park, overlooking the Hussain Sagar lake, may go up as it was teeming with week-end crowd. Reddy said that "according to preliminary reports, it was a terrorist act". |
| A senior police official said the explosives used in the twin blasts today were similar to the one used by terrorists in the Mecca Masjid blasts in May this year. |
| The police cordoned off the blast sites and sounded a red alert across the city. Searches were being conducted at railway stations and bus depots. |
| Security in Hyderabad city has been tightened further in view of 10,000 weddings that are scheduled tomorrow. |
| The dead and injured were ferried to Osmania Hospital, Medicity and Yashoda hospitals. Gory scenes were witnessed at the Lumbini Park auditorium with limbs, blood, clothes and shoes of the people watching the laser show strewn around. |
| Explosive experts visited the sites and collected samples of the materials used in the blast. |
| After visiting the blast sites, Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhar Reddy told reporters that "it is definitely a terrorist activity. It has claimed 30 lives. We are going into details." |
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