NEW DELHI: A bomb ripped through a restaurant popular with tourists in the western Indian city of Pune late Saturday, killing nine people and casting a shadow over the resumption of Indo-Pakistan peace talks.

Indian Home Secretary G.K. Pillai said earlier reports that a foreigner was among the dead had yet to be confirmed, but added that four Iranians, two Sudanese, one Taiwanese, one German and two Nepalese were among 57 people injured.

It was the first major attack on Indian soil since the November 2008 Mumbai massacre -- blamed on the banned, Pakistan-based Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba -- which prompted New Delhi to suspend dialogue with Islamabad.

The South Asian rivals had agreed just last week to resume talks, and the Pune blast triggered immediate opposition calls for that decision to be reviewed.

"What was being targeted was a soft target where both foreigners and Indians, especially young people, congregate," India's Home Minister P. Chidambaram told reporters Sunday after visiting the blast site and the wounded in hospital.

The bomb, apparently left under a table in a backpack, went off in the German Bakery -- a popular eatery in the Koregaon Park area of the city -- at about 7:30 pm (1400 GMT).

An unnamed waiter, injured in the blast, told the NDTV 24x7 news channel from his hospital bed that he alerted his manager after seeing an unaccompanied red and black bag.

"My employer told me to go find out who it belonged to. While I was on my way, someone outside asked for water. It was while I was getting the bottles that the bomb went off," he said.

"The men and women sitting there all died," he added.

Another eyewitness described a scene of carnage, with body parts littered around the immediate site of the blast.

"There is no German Bakery anymore," he said "There were bodies everywhere. We tried to help carry them into the ambulances."

All Indian states have been put on high alert, while The Telegraph newspaper in the eastern city of Kolkata said security would be increased for Sunday's India-South Africa cricket Test match.

Pune, a key education hub with a growing IT industry, is about 100 kilometres (60 miles) southeast of Mumbai and the blast carried echoes of the deadly 2008 attack on India's financial capital by 10 Islamist gunmen, in which 166 people were killed.

The German Bakery is only 200 yards (183 metres) from an ashram, or religious retreat, specialising in meditation courses run by a Swiss-based firm Osho International.

David Headley, a US-Pakistani national awaiting trial in the United States for allegedly scouting out possible targets in the Mumbai attacks, is believed to have stayed in the ashram on a trip to Pune, the government said.

Headley, 49, has pleaded not guilty to 12 terrorism-related charges and remains in custody in Chicago.

The bakery was also close to Chabad House, a Jewish cultural and religious centre run by the orthodox Chabad-Lubavitch movement whose members were targeted in the Mumbai attacks.

"Chabad House was surveyed by David Headley," said Chidambaram. "It's premature to say whether this particular incident is related to that.

"We will have to wait for the investigation to find out who was behind it... We are ruling out nothing. We are ruling in nothing."

Prakash Jawadekar, a spokesman for the main opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, said the government should now reconsider the resumption of talks with Pakistan, which has been scheduled for February 25.

"Terror and talks cannot go together" Jawadekar told reporters after visiting the blast site in Pune.A bomb detonated in a crowded bakery popular with foreigners in western India killing nine people and wounding 57, officials said Sunday, the first terrorist attack in the country since the 2008 Mumbai massacre.

The blast Saturday in the city of Pune, 125 miles (200 kilometers) southeast of Mumbai, threatened to damage new efforts to reduce tensions between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan, with Hindu nationalist leaders placing blame for the attack on India's Muslim neighbor.

"It was a bomb lying in an unattended bag," Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram told reporters Sunday after visiting the bakery and the wounded in hospitals.

Home Secretary G.K. Pillai said the blast occurred at 7:30 p.m. at the German Bakery, near the Osho Ashram, a renowned meditation center.

Pillai said the ashram, about 200 yards (meters) from the bakery, had been surveyed by David Headley, an American facing charges in Chicago for allegedly scouting targets for the Mumbai attack.

Chidambaram told reporters Headley had also observed the Chabad Jewish center near the bakery in Pune.

"This particular area has been on the radar (of terrorists) for quite some time," Chidambaram said. "Police were sensitized that Chabad House was a target, so was the Osho Ashram."

He said one or two people acting as customers left a backpack carrying the bomb inside the bakery.

Six people died at the scene and three later succumbed to injuries at hospitals, Pillai said. Of the 57 wounded, 19 were released from medical facilities.

Chidambaram said forensic experts were trying to determine what explosives were used and how the bomb was triggered.

"All the information available to us at the moment points to a plot to explode a device in a place that is frequented by foreigners as well as Indians," Chidambaram said.

Security forces were put on high alert Sunday at airports, train stations and markets across the country.

The bombing was the first terrorist strike in India since 10 Pakistan-based gunmen rampaged through hotels and a train station in the financial hub of Mumbai for 60 hours in November 2008, killing 166 people.

The building and nearby shops were badly damaged and splattered with thick patches of blood and several limbs. "I came running to the bakery after hearing the explosion. I found people lying all over the place," said Abba More, who lives nearby.

One foreigner was among the dead, but his nationality was not immediately known, Pillai said. Chidambaram said a Sudanese national was among the wounded in the blast.

The bombing came as ties between India and archrival Pakistan appeared to be warming. The two countries agreed to hold talks in New Delhi on Feb. 25, their first formal negotiations since the Mumbai attacks.

Asked whether the explosion was linked to the India-Pakistan talks, Pillai said: "Forensic investigations have just begun. Till they are completed, we will not know who is (involved)."

But Gopinath Munde, a senior Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party leader, asserted, "This again is an attack from Pakistan."