Major terror attacks in South India

New Delhi: The blast at Hyderabad's Mecca mosque on Friday is not a one off incident. The attack has sent out a loud and clear message that terrorists have increased their area of operations.

According to intelligence agencies, more and more sleeper cells are being activated in the southern states and this has set the alarm bells ringing.

Indian intelligence officials claim that religious fundamentalist outfits sponsored by Pakistan's external intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), are becoming increasingly active in south India.

This theory rang true when police teams visited Karnataka in search of terrorists after the blasts in Delhi just before Diwali in 2005.

Terror attacks seem to have spread right across the country – from Kashmir to Kanyakumari.

Following are some of the major attacks in South India:

• In February 1998 serial bomb blasts within a 12-km radius in Coimbatore killed 46 people – 35 men, 10 women and one child. Over 200 were injured in the 13 bombs that exploded in 11 places.
• Just three days after this, bomb blasts rocked Coimbatore again this time killing four people and on the same day, the police defused a car bomb planted at BJP President L K Advani's meeting ground.
• In October 2005 a blast in Hyderabad at the high-security Begumpet area in the special task force office killed two people. It was suspected to be the first incident of suicide bombing in the state.
• A terror attack on the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore on December 2005 killed Professor Munish Chandra Puri of IIT Delhi and injured four persons, after two or more unidentified gunmen fired at Puri and others.
• Probably, the only act of sabotage carried out in Bangalore in recent years before the IISc attack was the blast at St. Peter's and Paul Church in Jagajivanramnagar in June 2000. The members of the now banned Deendar Anjuman, which had links with the Pakistan's ISI, had allegedly carried out the explosion at the church.
• The major operation by the police against terrorists in Bangalore took place on September 29, 2002 when a suspected ISI agent, Imam Ali, and four of his accomplices were killed in a pre-dawn encounter.
• In another important operation in November 2002, the Bangalore police foiled the attempts of Tamil militants, who had links with the LTTE, to kill some prominent Kannada activists and create unrest in the city.