Three more held following Indian blasts

Indian police said they had arrested three more suspected militants over a series of bombings across the country that have left more than 140 people dead.

The police said the three men belonged to the Indian Mujahideen, which has claimed responsibility for serial blasts in several cities including attacks in New Delhi on September 13.

Two of the three men were among those who had planted bombs in the Indian capital, killing 22 people and injuring about 100, police said. Five bombs exploded while three were defused.

The latest arrests takes to five the number of suspects held since Friday's gun battle in a Muslim-dominated district of New Delhi, in which two suspects were shot dead.

Two alleged guerrillas escaped and one police officer was killed during the raid.

"These three men belong to the same module which we busted following Friday's shootout in which two Indian Mujahideen men were shot dead," police spokesman Rajan Bhagat told AFP.

He said one of the three arrested men had planted a bomb at a crowded electronics market and the second set a bomb, which did not explode, near the India Gate war memorial in the heart of the capital.

"The third suspect is the caretaker of the building where the gun battle took place and he is the father of a terrorist who planted another of the Delhi bombs," Bhagat said.

The Indian Mujahideen first came to public attention last November following serial blasts in Uttar Pradesh in which at least 13 people died.

The shadowy outfit said it was also responsible for a string of five bomb blasts in July in the western city of Ahmedabad that killed 45 people.

The group sent an email to media outlets after blasts in May in the tourist city of Jaipur that left 63 dead. In the email it announced it had launched an "open war" against India for supporting the United States.

Delhi anti-terrorism chief Karnal Singh, meanwhile, accused Pakistan's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), of using Indian nationals to disguise its part in serial bombings in India.

If a Pakistani national is caught, "then internationally the ISI faces problems and so they changed their strategy and the agency now has begun involving more Indian nationals in such attacks", Singh told reporters.

The Delhi shootout came a day after the government unveiled security measures to tackle what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said were "vast gaps" in intelligence gathering.