Word: paharganj
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...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...
...There are policemen everywhere in Paharganj: they have sealed off Main Bazar, the street where the blast went off, and only allow journalists and foreign tourists living in the hotels back into the street. The garish hotel lights on Main Bazar are mostly dimmed tonight; the street is eerie and deserted, except for the tourists...
...tourists are clearly rattled. Mary Jane Malet, an Australian artist visiting New Delhi and staying in a hotel in Paharganj, was in a grocery store just meters away from the blast site when she heard the noise. "There was screaming, and then the air was full of dust, and people were worried they'd asphyxiate themselves," she says. "Everyone got down on their knees; there was real fear and panic at that moment." She remembers eating at the Lord Krishna hotel, which is right opposite the bomb blast site, just a few nights ago with an Indian friend...
...officials are speculating that the perpetrator may be Lashkar-e-Toiba, a Pakistan-based group with ties to al Qaeda and believed to be behind many attacks on Indian institutions in the last five years. Police are now saying that they received a warning call 20 minutes before the Paharganj blast...
...other tourists do appear to be checking out of their hotels. There is fear in the air. At the Namaskar Hotel, one of the brightly lit, dingy hotels in Paharganj, the hotel worker at the desk nervously tells one of his staff: "I hear the police think the terrorists are staying in one of these hotels right here, do you know that...