At least six people were killed and 30 others injured in a suspected bomb attack in a packed cinema hall in northern India, police and witnesses said.
The explosion happened as hundreds of people, mainly poor migrant workers, were crammed into a theatre in the industrial city of Ludhiana in northern Punjab state to watch the late-night screening of a new Bollywood comedy.
Police officials in Amritsar, the main city in Punjab, put the toll at six dead and around 30 injured, many of them seriously.
"We were watching the film when I suddenly heard a huge blast and I rushed outside. I saw some four or five bodies inside," an unidentified eyewitness told the Hindi-language Aaj Tak news channel.
Indian media reports said the likely cause was a bomb attack, although the Home Ministry in New Delhi said it was still "too early" to draw any conclusions.
India has been hit by a wave of unsolved bomb attacks in recent months that officials have blamed on Pakistani-backed Islamic militants.
The latest blast comes days after two people were killed and nearly a dozen injured on Thursday in a bomb attack near one of India's most revered Islamic shrines in the northern state of Rajasthan.
India sounded a nationwide alert after that attack, which came ahead of Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim festival at the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, on Sunday and the Hindu festival of Dussehra on October 21. © 2007 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
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