NEW DELHI - India's defense minister suggested Monday that archrival Pakistan may have aided the people responsible for a series of explosions in the capital over the weekend that killed 21 people.
"Militants are getting support from across the border and it is a fact," Defense Minister A.K. Antony told reporters in New Delhi, responding to a question about possible Pakistani involvement in the blasts. "It is a matter of serious concern."
India has routinely accused Pakistan of aiding groups believed to be behind dozens of attacks in India in the last three years. New Delhi also accused Pakistani intelligence agents of involvement in a suicide bombing at the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan, but has offered little proof to back up those charges.
Pakistan has denied the accusations and issued a strong statement condemning the New Delhi attacks.
Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammed Sadiq declined to comment Monday, saying he had not seen a full report of Antony's comments.
At least five explosions struck a park and crowded shopping areas in New Delhi on Saturday, killing 21 people and wounding about 100 others.
A group calling itself the Indian Mujahideen claimed responsibility for the attacks and for bombings in the western city of Jaipur in May that killed 61 people and July blasts in the western state of Gujarat that killed at least 45.
Police believe the group is a front for the Students' Islamic Movement of India, or SIMI, which was banned in 2001.
On Monday, the Anti-Terror Squad in Mumbai said it was searching for a suspected SIMI activist, identified by just one name, Tauqeer, who is believed to have sent e-mails claiming responsibility for Saturday's attacks.
Tauqeer, a former employee of a software company, went missing in 2001, apparently joining SIMI and going underground, said Hemant Karkare, head of the Anti-Terror Squad.
Police believe someone hacked into wireless networks in Mumbai to send e-mails shortly before the New Delhi and Gujarat blasts.
The government has blamed SIMI for a wave of bomb attacks that have rocked India in the last three years, killing hundreds, saying SIMI activists were working together with foreign Islamic groups.
Several alleged SIMI activists have been rounded up in recent months, but police have made little apparent headway in finding those behind the attacks.
Also Monday, a team of police officers from New Delhi headed to Gujarat to investigate similarities between the two attacks.
Police also evacuated a 12-story building near the site of one of the New Delhi blasts after receiving a warning there was a bomb inside.
Police searched the building with sniffer dogs before they announced an all-clear.
India, a largely Hindu country, has long battled Muslim separatist violence in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, the country's only Muslim-majority state. It was not clear whether the Indian Mujahideen or SIMI are tied to the Kashmiri groups.
On Monday, one of the main Kashmiri militant groups, the Pakistani-based Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, denied any connection to the Indian Mujahideen or the attacks.
"Lashkar-e-Tayyaba is not even remotely linked to what is said to be the Indian Mujahideen," the Rising Kashmir newspaper quoted the group's spokesman, Abdullah Ghaznavi, as saying.
"Government of India has always tried to tarnish the image of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba by linking the organization to everything that happens in India," Ghaznavi said.
On Monday, two Indian soldiers and two policemen were killed in a clash with militants in Indian-controlled Kashmir, police said.
A combined force of police and soldiers was searching for the militants in the Poonch district, near the heavily fortified de facto border separating the Indian and Pakistani portions of the divided Himalayan region, when they came under fire, said deputy inspector general of police Kamal Saini.
The fighting began late Sunday and was still continuing Monday afternoon, he said.
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