Mumbai blasts prompt further questions over Indian intelligence Authorities

In India have stepped up security in all major cities after three deadly bomb blasts.

The bombs killed 17 people and injured 131 in the commercial capital, Mumbai.

So far no-one has claimed responsibility, but terrorists trained in Pakistan are the prime suspects.

Our correspondent Richard Lindell is in the capital, New Delhi and he joins me on the line now.

Richard, the Indian home affairs minister has recently given a briefing on this issue. Can you update us on the latest please?

RICHARD LINDELL: Yes the Indian home affairs minister has actually updated the number of dead and he's updated that to 18 confirmed killed now. One-hundred-and-thirty-one people were injured and sent to hospital; of those 23 are seriously injured and some of those remain in a critical condition.

He also spoke more about the kinds of explosives used and they do appear like they were homemade bombs - ammonium nitrate which is a common fertiliser. Two were very high intensity bombs; one was a relatively lower one. No triggers were found at the scene, suggesting they were set off at each site.

So all in all he's sort of pointing to the fact that these were homemade basic devises.

Maharashtra's chief minister, Prithviraj Chavan, also maintained that CCTV cameras had "got a lot of useful footage" of the attacks, but explained away the failure to upgrade the system by saying that "Mumbai wants quick progress … but procurement (of equipment) is a difficult process."

Even the ruling Congress party leader, Rahul Gandhi, joined the official chorus and declared that "99% of terror attacks have been stopped" by the authorities. Indian newspapers, however, carried long lists of terror strikes in Mumbai and other cities during the last decade, including several that remain unsolved.

"It is very difficult to stop every single terror attack," Gandhi added. "We've improved in leaps and bounds, but terrorism is something that is also increasing in leaps and bounds."

Many businesses at the gold, diamond and jewellery centres in Mumbai that were hit by the blasts remained closed on Thursday, but a few traders and workers who were around expressed anger and frustration at the fact that Mumbai had again become a target for terrorists.

"Terrorist attacks on Mumbai have become an annual event, the city has become an easy target, as the government cannot do anything," a businessman in Zaveri Bazaar said on a TV news channel. "So we've no choice but to keep working."

Even as politicians resorted to tired clichés about the "resilience of the people of Mumbai", a young man at the third bomb site in Dadar spoke of ordinary people's helplessness in the face of the attacks.

He said: "The relatives of the injured and dead are faced with one kind of tension today, whereas others like me have another kind of tension – the daily tension of filling our stomach. Inflation has gone out of hand, so we've to work in order to survive."

A lot of the anger was directed against politicians touring the bomb sites with TV crews. Meanwhile, relatives of the dead stood patiently outside the city coroner's office in the monsoon rain hoping to collect the bodies of their loved ones.