Mumbai Blasts Baffle Indian Intelligence

India still has no idea who was behind the three explosions that killed 18 people in Mumbai yesterday, and the government has admitted it had no inkling the attacks were coming. “Whoever planned this attack worked in a very, very clandestine manner,” Indian Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram told reporters yesterday, according to the Wall Street Journal. But he insisted that it was “not a failure of intelligence,” adding that policing such crowded areas is difficult. “Every city in India is vulnerable,” he said.

In the past, India has been quick to pin attacks on Islamic extremist groups, the Washington Post observes, but not this time. “We are not pointing our fingers, at this stage, at this group or that group,” Chidambaram said. “All groups hostile to India are on the radar.” Forensics teams have so far determined that the bombs were made with ammonium nitrate, and were possibly set off via a timer rather than remotely detonated. Click here for more on the aftermath. (More India stories.)