GANDHINAGAR, India (Reuters) - Gunmen killed 29 people in an attack on an Indian Hindu temple on Tuesday that could reignite communal unrest and raise tensions with Pakistan.
Police said more than 70 people were also injured in the attack and a further 100 people were feared trapped inside with the unidentified gunmen who stormed the Akshardham Temple in Gandhinagar, the capital of Western Gujarat state.
Indian Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani, blamed "the enemies of the country" for the attack and said four children and six women were among the dead.
Gujarat is still recovering from the country's worst Hindu-Muslim bloodshed in a decade in February and March, which started after a Muslim mob burned 59 Hindus to death, triggering reprisals in which at least 1,000, mostly Muslims, died.
Police said the raid had stoked fears of fresh communal violence, particularly in Gujarat commercial capital Ahmedabad.
"There is tension and fear in Ahmedabad. People are scared that something could happen at night," K.K. Mysorewala, duty state intelligence police inspector, told Reuters.
A hardline Hindu group linked to India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party plans to call a strike to protest the attack.
"We are holding a meeting later today to decide on it. It could either be a state-wide strike or a national strike," Jaideep Patel, general secretary of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad's Gujarat unit told reporters outside the temple.
Hundreds of anxious relatives gathered at the main gates of the temple, as Indian rescue and security forces rushed to the area and pulled out the dead and injured on stretchers.
"I heard a loud noise and gunshots. I didn't know what was happening. Then we were told by the temple trustees to get inside a room," said survivor Gurumukh Palwani, 40, who managed to get out of the temple with his two children.
"There were about 600 people at the time of the attack. Thank God I am alive," he said, tears running down his cheeks.
"There are three militants armed with automatic weapons. The militants are still inside the temple," inspector R.B. Rawal in the Gujarat state intelligence control room told Reuters.
A loud explosion was heard inside the temple complex in the early evening, but there were conflicting reports on whether or not the gunmen had seized any hostages.
ADVANI MAKES KASHMIR LINK
Advani said according to initial information, the gunmen, armed with AK-47s and grenades, drove up to the temple complex in a car, jumped a fence and shot dead a woman nearby.
"They next shot dead a temple volunteer and then started hurling grenades," Advani quoted a monk as saying."
Without naming Pakistan, he implicitly pointed a finger at Islamabad by saying that "the enemies of the country" were using the attack to shift attention from disputed Kashmir, where state elections are currently underway in Indian Kashmir.
"I see in this a very deliberate design," he told reporters.
New Delhi has long accused Pakistan of sponsoring Islamic militant attacks in Kashmir and elsewhere in India -- a charge Islamabad denies.
Both countries have mobilized close to a million men on their border since an attack on India's parliament in December which New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based militants, and the nuclear-armed rivals came close to war in June over Kashmir.
The attack on the temple coincided with the second round of the state election in Kashmir, which has so far passed off relatively peacefully despite threats by separatists to derail the poll by attacking those taking part.
"It (the Gujarat raid) could even be a terrorist retaliation in frustration over their failure in Kashmir," Venkaiah Naidu, president of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), said in a statement.
Pakistani Information Minister Nisar Memon condemned the temple attack and said it reflected the failure of Hindu nationalist leaders to build a tolerant society in Gujarat.
"We condemn this attack on an Indian temple by whoever has done it," he told Reuters. "This is the kind of society that the leadership of the BJP has built in Gujarat."
TEMPLE SECT SUPPORTED WORLDWIDE
Officials said the gunmen entered the temple complex at around 4.30 p.m. local time.
"I am fortunate to be alive today," said 16-year-old Priti Nahata, who hid along with a group of other people in a room until the police came and told them it was safe to leave."
Bloodstained bodies could be seen from the gates being carried out of the temple on stretchers.
Another white-haired man lying on a stretcher, his legs dangling, stared in shock, his arms across his chest, his white undershirt and brown pants splattered with blood.
Indian police tightened security across the country to head off the risk of communal violence.
"As a precautionary measure, we have sounded a high alert across the state," said a police spokesman in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. "We are not taking any chances."
Akshardham Temple is a Hindu religious and cultural complex visited by some two million people annually, according to the Web Site of the Swaminarayan sect which runs it.
The imposing 10-storey pink sandstone temple houses a golden idol of Lord Swaminarayan, an 18th century Hindu monk who started the sect. Swaminarayan's followers believe him to be an incarnation of Lord Vishnu, the Hindu god of preservation.
The sect says the monument is made entirely of 6,000 tons of pink sandstone, with no steel or cement used at all, to ensure it will last for a thousand years.
The sect has 450 temples in 45 countries and its temple in Neasden, London is considered a landmark for its architecture.