Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security in the US, said his agency is closely monitoring developments in Mumbai.

At this time, there is no specific or credible intelligence suggesting an imminent threat to the homeland or our transit systems. There are no plans to raise the nation’s threat level as a result of this atrocious act. We will work with individual transit agencies that may choose to increase their vigilance, as a matter of prudence, at this time. More generally, we continue to strengthen mass transit security throughout the country.

The European Union joined the chorus of world governments and their leaders condemning the blasts in Mumbai.

So too has France. And Canada. And Australia. Also Spain.

In Canada, the Indian community tried to get to grips with the tragedy.

And United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said the incident underlines the need for a global effort, by all nations, to eradicate terrorism.

The daily briefing of White House spokesman Sean McCormick was, today, understandably focused on the Mumbai blasts. Here is the transcript of the briefing, that kicked off with this statement:

Today there were multiple terrorist attacks in India in Srinagar and in Mumbai. We condemn these attacks in the strongest possible terms. Many have lost their lives and many more were injured. So our thoughts and prayers go out to those who have lost loved ones or friends or relatives in these attacks and we wish a speedy recovery to all of those who were injured.

We have been touch with the Indian Government concerning these attacks and, of course, we will offer any assistance that they might request. I understand that the investigation is ongoing as to who is responsible for these attacks. I don’t believe that there’s been any claim of responsibility at this point.

Paul Erdman, the one-time Swiss banker turned author, says the Mumbai blasts are more a fallout of tensions in Kashmir, than part of a continuing al Qaeda effort to target the economic hotspots of the world. And, he says, the attacks won’t have a lasting impact on the metro’s — and by extension India’s — economy, either:

Given this context, what happened Tuesday will not produce any serious consequences for India, be they political, economic, or financial.

Where its financial markets are concerned, after overshooting on the top side, equity markets have cooled off considerably of late as foreign investors got cold feet and pulled out.

But where the long run is concerned, India will continue represent one of the better countries on earth in which to invest.

In its report the Independent, London, suggests that preliminary investigations center around both Lashkar-e-Tayeba and Dawood Ibrahim’s D Company.

There are many groups which could have been responsible for yesterday’s atrocity. India is the target for one of the widest range of militant groups in the world, from Maoist guerrillas to tribal separatists. But most do not have the capability to mount such an attack. There were unconfirmed reports that Indian intelligence was focusing on Lashkar-e Toiba as the prime suspect for the attacks. Lashkar’s main cause is to “liberate” Kashmir from Indian rule.It used to have close links to Pakistan’s ISI intelligence but Islamabad says links have been severed.

There were also reports that Indian intelligence was investigating the possible involvement of the “D Company” mafia group, which is believed to have been behind the bombings in 1993. Run by the multimillionaire Dawood Ibrahim, the group was entirely non-political until 1993. But in the wake of the religious violence that followed the demolition of the Babri Masjid mosque in 1992, Mr Ibrahim, a Muslim, is believed to have decided to get involved.

Terrorism expert B Raman has also pointed to a possible Dawood connection, suggesting that his group could have been the executors of a project hatched by al Qaeda.

While there is no reason to believe that the terrorist strikes of July 11 might have been carried out by the Arab members of Al Qaeda, the inspiration and planning are likely to have come from the group.

The execution could have been through Al Qaeda’s surrogates — Lashkar-e-Tayiba, other Pakistani members of the Al Qaeda-led International Islamic Front, members of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India or the followers of Dawood Ibrahim.

Pakistani media had reported last month that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence had re-located Dawood in the tribal areas near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. Bin Laden and his second in line of command Ayman al-Zawahiri operate from the same area.

Jonathan Steele in the Guardian traces the eclipse and re-emergence of LeT.

Lashkar-e-Taiba (Soldiers of the Pure) operated freely in Pakistan until shortly after September 11 2001. It recruited and raised funds openly, putting collection boxes in shops.

After George Bush pressed his Pakistani counterpart, Pervez Musharraf, to ban the group in January 2002, it split. One faction renamed itself Jama’at ud Dawa, while others worked more loosely; so the name, Lashkar-e-Taiba, is as vague an umbrella for militants focused on the Kashmir issue as al-Qaida is for anti-American jihadis, according to Dr Price.

Until it was banned, Lashkar-e-Taiba took responsibility for attacks made on Indian military targets, including one on a barracks at the Red Fort in Delhi in which three people died.

The group denied killing civilians, claiming such an act went against its religious belief. Indian police accused the group of explosions in Mumbai in August 2003 which killed 55 people, and of a raid on the Indian parliament in 2001 that almost brought India and Pakistan to war. The group was blamed for attacks in October in Delhi which killed more than 60 people, and for explosions in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi this year which killed at least 15 people.

The earthquake in northern Pakistan and parts of Kashmir in October gave the group a new lease of life. Pakistan allowed it to collect funds openly again, officially for reconstruction work. Many of its offices reopened.

You see this after every tragedy, every disaster, everywhere in the world — the arrival on the scene of Very Very Important Politicos for an “on the spot review”.

Here, now, it is Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil and Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav, due in Mumbai Wednesday. As will Leader of the Opposition LK Advani, and BJP president Rajnath Singh.

They will come, and they will “tour the affected areas”, and make concerned faces for the cameras, and talk into TV boom mikes of how they have ‘instructed’ the concerned chief minister/police official to ‘take all appropriate action.

And the media will report, and the TV anchors will play the clips ad nauseum, and we will watch.

Does anyone pause to wonder why? To ask, what can you do at the site, that you cannot do from wherever in heck your home is? To wonder what this public display of concern is intended to achieve?

Here is what it does achieve: At a time when the police force of the concerned state is stretched thin with invesigations and with securing a panic-stricken city, with ensuring there is no outbreak of trouble, harried officials have to detach sizeable sections of the constabulary to provide security for the VVIPoliticos.

Makes sense?

The Australian dollar opened more than half a US cent stronger today, in line with a firmer euro, which strengthened as the market reacted to bombings in India.

Elsewhere, it is reported that gold prices soared to a five-week high.

George Gero of RBC Capital Markets Global Futures said the bombing of the commuter rail network in Mumbai was the catalyst of the rally in gold.

In hospitals across the metro, those wounded in the bomb blasts continue to bleed, to suffer. Meanwhile, politicians of various hues have begun jockeying for advantage.

The Shiv Sena’s executive president Uddhav Thackeray has demanded the resignation of the Democratic Front-led government of Maharashtra for its inability to prevent the blasts.

"Home Minister R R Patil and Revenue Minister Narayan Rane should now answer who is behind the blasts," he said, adding that Maharashtra has become a godown of "Islamic jehadis and RDX". Obviously smarting under Patil's insinuations on Monday that Sunday's vandalism and violence were both the handiwork of the Sena, he said, ''The vandalism was the handiwork of fanatics. Will they now claim that the Sena has engineered the blasts? Only fanatics can carry out such crimes. Mumbaikars have to pay heavily for the inefficiency of the state government."

Elsewhere, Leader of the Opposition and former BJP president LK Advani, while inaugurating an overbridge in Ahmedabad, upped the ante and blamed the UPA government in New Delhi for the attacks.

On a similar note, BJP president Rajnath Singh said the blasts underlined the UPA government’s failure to control terrorism.

If any of these leaders have expressed concern for the victims, and/or solidarity with a city that has been constantly in the terrorist crosshairs, we missed it.

The Lashkar-E-Tayeba has denied any involvement in the Mumbai serial blasts.

In a telephonic statement to several media organisations, Lashkar spokesman Dr Abdullah Ghaznavi condemned in strongest terms the serial blasts both in Mumbai and Srinagar.

“These are inhuman and barbaric acts. Islam does not permit killing of an innocent person,” he added.

Dr Ghaznavi said those who have perpetrated such “dastardly acts” were “enemies of humanity”.

“Blaming the Lashkar-e-Toiba for such inhuman acts is an attempt by the Indian security agencies to defame the freedom struggle in Jammu and Kashmir,” he said.

This blog is devoted to news relating to the blasts and thus may not be the perfect platform to editorialize, but it is difficult to avoid asking a question: Dr Ghaznavi, did you say you are the official spokesman of the LeT, speaking from Pakistan

Really?

You are aware, surely, that the LeT has been named a terrorist organization both by the United Nations and the United States? That it has been banned by the Pakistan government headed by President Pervez Musharraf as far back as January 2002? That, in fact, it is not even supposed to exist?

A bit strange, therefore, for a non-existent organization like yours to have an official spokesperson making official statements, surely?

As time passes, focus — and pressure — shifts from police and rescue workers at the various blast sites, to the hospitals and doctors battling through the night to save lives while, around them, scenes of heartbreak draw tears even from those inured to tragedy.

“Most of the patients have received burn injuries and are suffering from severe trauma,” M.E Yeolekar, head of Sion Hospital, told Reuters.

“In my entire career as a physician, this is the second destruction I have seen of this magnitude,” he said, referring to bomb blasts in the western city in 1993 which killed 250 and wounded around 1,000 people.

Hundreds of relatives frantically pored over a list of dead and injured outside the hospital, a scene repeated at many other hospitals, packed with people searching for friends and relatives.

Some of the people who entered a makeshift morgue were unable to identify badly mutilated bodies.

“I spoke to him 10 minutes before he died,” said Haji Mastan, sobbing uncontrollably over the death of his cousin Mukti Mahmood Darvesh, who was travelling on one of the suburban trains.

“Why did it have to end like this? He was young and he has children.”