At least 42 people, including five women and seven students, have been killed and 50 injured in two explosions at a crowded park and a popular eatery here last evening, three months after the Mecca Masjid blasts, police said today.The week-end outing at the popular Gokul Chat shop at Kothi locality turned into a tragedy when a deafening explosion ripped through it killing 32 people and wounding 21, they said. Five minutes earlier, 10 people, most of them from outside the state, were killed and 29 injured in another blast in an open air auditorium in Lumbini Park near the state secretariat in the heart of the city when a laser show was underway, they said.
The blast at the auditorium, where 500 people were present, was so powerful that some bodies were flung in the air. Among the dead at the Lumbini Park were two students from Ahmedabad.
Four Railways employee are among those killed in the blasts. The condition of some of the injured was stated to be serious, police said.
Meanwhile with police tightening security in the wake of the Hyderabad blasts, more than 700 "suspicious elements" have been arrested in the city, a top police official said.
Chennai Police Commissioner G Nanchil Kumaran, after a security review meeting with high ranking police officials here today, told reporters that strategic locations like the Central station and Secretariat have been brought under heightened surveillance.
"Intensified night vigil and patrolling since last night have resulted in the arrest of 720 suspicious persons who are being questioned," he said.
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