Cooker bomb sets car ablaze near firing site

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A car up in flames after a blast in it near the scene of shooting in Old Delhi on Sunday. PHOTO: Biplab Banerjee

A Maruti 800 car parked near the site of the suspected terror attack in the Jama Masjid area on Sunday caught fire after a suspected pressure cooker blast. The explosion in the car took place just a few metres away from the Jama Masjid’s Gate Number, merely 3 hours after an attack on a vehicle ferrying foreign tourists.
The incident took place at around 2 pm, some 50 metres away from Gate No. 3 of Jama Masjid and near a police station where two men had earlier in the day fired at a visiting five-member Taiwanese media crew, injuring two of them.
“The car went up in flames due to a suspected crudely-circuited pressure cooker bomb,” said the Delhi police spokesperson, Rajan Bhagat.
Meanwhile, the investigating officers suspect the involvement of a “group of disgruntled youth or local criminals” who wanted to create a scare in the area.
Police officers said that soon after the blast in the car, at least four fire tenders were immediately rushed to the spot to douse the fire and it took an hour to bring the situation under control. However, no one was injured due to the blast in the car.
The car has been taken to the Jama Masjid police station. There was some panic in the area as the incident came soon after the firing incident.
A team of Delhi police’s elite anti-terror force Special Cell also visited the spot. However, the police is still doing further investigations and officials refused to reveal more details on the explosion in the car.
Earlier, two Taiwanese tourists were wounded when two gunmen on a motorcycle opened random fire near the Jama Masjid in Old Delhi on Sunday morning, creating a scare ahead of the Commonwealth Games.
The injured, Ko Chang and Ku Ze Wei, both in their 20s, were shot in the head and stomach, respectively, when the gunmen fired at a bus from which a group of tourists was alighting, the police and witnesses said.
The attack, just after 11 am, took place near one of the main gates of the mammoth, 16th century red sandstone mosque in Old Delhi.