Surat, July 29:

Seven more bombs were found in this south Gujarat city today by the afternoon, taking the number of unexploded bombs found here in the past three days to 12.

The first lot had been found on Sunday, a day after serial blasts in Ahmedabad killed at least 50 people and injured 200.

Four bombs were found on Sunday and one last evening. More unexploded bombs could pop up before the day ends, said a police constable.

Most of the bombs found today were in the Varacha area. The first was found in the morning behind the Labeshwar police post when a provision store owner was opening his shop at about 9 am. As he was pushing his shutters up a packet fell down. He immediately called the police.

Police inspector VB Patel reached the spot with the bomb disposal and dog squads.

A little while later another bomb was found near Baroda bridge in Santoshnagar area close to a garment shop,

Mahavir Fashion. The bomb was placed inside an electric meter box. It was defused

immediately.

Both bombs were found within an hour and defused.

This afternoon, another bomb was found on the branches of a peepul tree close to the Matawadi police post in the Varacha area and defused. Even as the cops were heaving a sigh of relief, they had to rush to Varacha’s mini diamond market where four more bombs four. All four were defused.

The bomb found late last night was also in the Labeshwar area.

All the bombs found in the neighbourhood were planted withing a kilometre of one

another.

None of the bombs found in Surat so far has exploded, leading to all sorts of theories here on whether the city was being used as a staging post and a cache by the terrorists on their way to Ahmedabad.

Bomb scare in Kerala town:

KOZHIKODE: A search was conducted in a Kerala town near here on Tuesday morning after a police station received a phone call that warned of a bomb blast by noon.

People were evacuated from the main bus station and surrounding areas in Nadapuram, around 60 km from here, after the police received the call. “We have taken all precautions. The bomb squad has searched the area and we haven’t found any suspicious object,” said Deputy Superintendent of Police A Gopakumar. The police station received the call around at around 2 am There were reports in local news channels that the phone call had been traced to Pakistan, but senior police officials refused to confirm this. — IANS