NEW DELHI/JAIPUR/PUNE, 15 May 2008 — When Indian television news broadcasts appealed for blood donors yesterday, a day after 80 people were killed in bomb blasts in India’s Jaipur city, Yaseef Khan rushed to help.

Khan insisted that someone check his blood type and use his blood to save a child, joining hundreds of volunteers in other hospitals in the historic city queuing to help the blast victims.

“How can I sit at home when people are crying for blood?” Khan said.

Both Muslims like Khan and Hindus united yesterday to help victims of the bomb blasts, offering the use of their mobile phones, and distributing food and fruit juices as relatives swarmed hospitals of Jaipur from the early hours of the morning.

“Bombing cannot divide the Hindus and Muslims, it never succeeded and people should know that it is not going to work,” Sohail Illyas, a Muslim man who lives in the walled city, said after meeting his Hindu neighbor following the blasts.

Asha Sharma, 32, was relieved when a young man came to her with his mobile phone, insisting that calls were free.

“I was wondering how to inform mother that papa is all right, now I am happy,” she said in Jaipur’s main hospital.

Volunteers from the Sant Nirakari Mandal, a local voluntary organization made up of both Hindus and Muslims, distributed free medicines to patients who could not afford them.

“We have also handed over 300 packaged fruit juices to the hospital for patients,” K.K. Joshi, a senior volunteer said.

Many were seen helping the police in mortuaries, counting bodies and putting them into waiting vans, as people thronged the mortuaries in an effort to get the bodies of their relatives.

In another hospital, 29-year-old Nirender Singh, invited everyone to his tea stall for a free cup.

Doctors and bomb victims were glad for his generosity. “We managed to save at least 150 lives last night because of help from these unknown people,” Rakesh Sharma, an orthopaedic surgeon said yesterday. “When the victims started to arrive in swarms, we were getting scared, but not anymore.”

“Neither the Hindus nor the Muslims here want to fight,” said Mohiuddin Qureshi, a gemstone trader who works in a market that was bombed. “Our lives are together, our businesses are together. This is the work of outsiders,” said Qureshi, who went to 10 burials yesterday.

Police earlier yesterday imposed a daylong curfew which they lifted in the evening. The curfew was meant to prevent any retaliatory violence.

Authorities suspect militants were behind the blasts, and they moved quickly to stop any potential clashes between the city’s Hindu majority and its sizable Muslim minority. Police were deployed in force and people kept off the streets of Jaipur’s old walled city, where all seven bombs went off on Tuesday.

The bombers may have been aiming “to create communal tension,” said Vasundhara Raje, the chief minister of Rajasthan state, of which Jaipur is the capital. “But there is peace in the city. The curfew was a precaution.”

In talks with Raje on phone, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Home Minister Shivraj Patil assured her of all possible federal help in the aftermath of the blast. A company of the National Security Guard reached Rajasthan to assist police in the probe, Raje told a press conference. Raje appealed to the people to maintain peace.

“We are still in the process of investigating. I don’t want to jump to conclusions,” Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon said.

Police in Jaipur have so far questioned nearly a dozen people. But no arrests have been made, and Raje told reporters that authorities only “have some slender leads.” Nearly 200 people were wounded in the explosions. Police said an eighth bomb was found and defused.

“Obviously, it’s a terrorist plot,” A.S. Gill, the police chief of Rajasthan, said hours after the attack. “The way it has been done, the attempt was to cause the maximum damage to human life.”

Brajesh Kumar, 15, was on his way to the temple when the bomb exploded. “I heard a big noise and then I felt something pierce my leg and chest,” he said from a hospital bed yesterday. He had broken a rib and shrapnel in his feet and chest, he said.

Another bomb exploded near the city’s Johari Bazaar jewelry market, a popular tourist attraction. Bombing sites were littered with dropped shopping bags, mangled bicycles, damaged cars and overturned bicycle rickshaws, the most popular mode of transport in the crowded lanes of Jaipur.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but India’s junior home minister, Sriprakash Jaiswal, said, “One can’t rule out the involvement of a foreign power,” using language commonly understood to refer to Pakistan.

Maharashtra Director General of Police Anami Narayan Roy told Arab News major cities of the state including Mumbai were placed under high alert.

Security was also beefed up at religious and historical places, government buildings and defense installations. All police commissioners and district superintendents of police have been ordered to remain alert, Roy said and appealed to the people to remain calm and maintain communal harmony.

The State Intelligence Department was monitoring all incoming and outgoing national and international calls through cell phones and regular landlines. The SID was particularly monitoring calls originating from or being received in Mumbai, Pune, Aurangabad and Nashik, as these places are alleged to be the hotbed of terrorists who are suspected to have carried out terrorists acts in the past.

— With input from agencies