A grenade blast in a Hare Krishna temple during a major Hindu religious festival killed four people in India's northeast today, police said.
Another 40 people were injured, mostly in a stampede that followed the blast in Imphal, the capital of Manipur state, while Hindus were celebrating the birthday of Hindu god Krishna, said a police officer.
The temple belongs to the International Society of Krishna Consciousness, or ISKCON. The injured included four foreign nationals, an army officer said. One of them was an American taken to hospital in the Regional Institute of Medical Sciences in Imphal, an institute official said.
No other details were immediately available. The attack occurred despite tight police and paramilitary security in and around the temple where hundreds of Hindus congregated for the festival.
No one claimed responsibility for the blast. Goswami said the attackers escaped after detonating the grenade. Dozens of insurgencies have festered for years across India's seven northeastern states, of which Manipur is one.
Nearly all are fighting for autonomy or independent homelands for the region's indigenous peoples, most of them ethnically closer to Burma and China than to the rest of India. The militants say the central government in New Delhi - 1,000 miles to the west - exploits the northeast's rich natural resources while doing little to improve its poor infrastructure and alleviate widespread unemployment.
AP