Times of India

HYDERABAD HORROR: This is the area in Lumbini Park where one of the blasts took place.
Pic: CNN- IBN

HYDERABAD, Aug 25: In a major terror strike, at least 30 persons were killed and about 60 injured in two powerful near-simultaneous blasts at a crowded park and a popular eating joint in Hyderabad on Saturday evening.

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.

In another blast five minutes earlier at a place five kilometres away, six persons perished in a blast in an auditorium in Lumbini Amusement 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 bodies were flung into the air and scattered over the area.

Hyderabad Police Commissioner Balwinder Singh said the toll at Lumbini Park, overlooking the picturesque 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 on Saturday 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 and conducted searches at railway stations and bus depots.