HYDERABAD, India, May 18 (AP) — A bomb ripped through a historic mosque in this southern Indian city on Friday, killing 11 people. Two more died in clashes that followed between Muslim worshipers and security forces, the police said.

Minutes after the blast at the Mecca Masjid, which was built in the 17th century, worshipers who were angered by what they said had been a lack of police protection began chanting “God is great!” and hurling stones at the police.

Although the mosque violence was quickly brought under control, Muslims later clashed with security forces in at least three parts of Hyderabad, said Mohammed Abdul Basit, the police chief of Andhra Pradesh, whose capital is Hyderabad. The police fired live ammunition and tear gas to quell the riots, killing two people, he said.

The bombing, which also wounded 35 people, many of them seriously, and subsequent clashes raised fears of Hindu-Muslim violence in the city, which has long been plagued by communal tensions and occasional spasms of interreligious bloodletting.

Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy, the chief minister of the state, appealed for calm between Hindus and Muslims. He called the bombing an act of “intentional sabotage on the peace and tranquillity in the country.”

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh echoed those sentiments in a statement released later.

“The prime minister has condemned the bomb blast in Hyderabad and has urged members of all communities to maintain peace and communal harmony,” his media adviser, Sanjaya Baru, said in the statement.

Mr. Reddy told reporters in New Delhi, where he was meeting with federal officials on unrelated business, that one bomb went off at around 1:30 p.m. and that the police found and defused two other bombs soon afterward.

About 10,000 people usually attend Friday Prayer at the mosque, which is located in a Muslim neighborhood.

“As soon as prayers ended, we were about to get up, and there was a huge, deafening blast sending bodies into the air,” said Abdul Quader, 30, who was slightly wounded in the legs. “People started running helter-skelter.”

The explosion immediately drew comparisons to the Sept. 8, 2006, bombing of a mosque during a Muslim festival in Malegaon, a city in western India, which killed 31 people.

India’s worst religious violence in recent years was in 2002, in western Gujarat state. More than 1,000 people, most of them Muslim, were killed by Hindu mobs in revenge attacks after a train fire killed 60 Hindus returning from a religious pilgrimage. Muslims were blamed for the train fire.

A series of terrorist bombings has hit India in the past year, including the July bombings of seven Mumbai commuter trains that killed more than 200 people. Most of the bombings have been blamed on Muslim militants based in neighboring Pakistan.

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May 21, 2007
Indian Muslims Protest Killings After Weekend Mosque Attack
By REUTERS

HYDERABAD, India, May 20 (Reuters) — Hundreds of Indian Muslims protested Sunday against the killings of five people by the police during demonstrations after a Friday bomb attack on a 17th-century mosque.

The chief minister of the state of Andhra Pradesh contended that a “foreign hand” was behind the blast here, which killed 11 people. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

“We have conclusive and overwhelming evidence of a foreign hand in Friday’s bomb blast at Mecca Masjid,” said the chief minister, Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy. He did not specify any group or country, but said the national government would be asked to look into the matter further.

The bombing took place during Friday Prayer inside the sprawling Mecca Masjid. Hundreds of Muslims later protested the response by the police; some threw stones at them. The police later shot and killed five people as they clashed with the crowd.

On Sunday, Muslim youths blocked the entry to the state police chief’s office for over two hours to protest the killings. They also burned the chief in effigy.

“Why did the police use regular bullets when there were guidelines to use rubber bullets only to quell rioting mobs?” said Asaduddin Owaisi, a member of Parliament who led the protests.

It was the third attack on a mosque in India in the past year. Intelligence agencies and analysts say members of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India could be behind them, backed by the Pakistani intelligence agency and militant groups.

The aim, they say, is to cause communal clashes in India which, while more than 80 percent Hindu, has a large Muslim population.