India bombings kill at least 12

HYDERABAD, India -- A pair of bombs exploded last evening in a crowded shopping area in the southern city of Hyderabad, killing at least 12 people and wounding scores of others in the worst bombing in India in more than a year, officials said.

The blasts occurred about two minutes apart around 7 p.m. outside a movie theater and a bus station, police said. Storefronts were shattered, motorcycles covered in debris and food and plates from a roadside restaurant were scattered on the ground near a tangle of dead bodies. Passersby rushed the bleeding and wounded out of the area.

"This is a dastardly attack, the guilty will not go unpunished," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said.

The bombs were attached to two bicycles about 500 feet apart in Dilsukh Nagar district, Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said in New Delhi. The district is a usually crowded shopping area.

Hyderabad, a city of 10 million in the state of Andhra Pradesh, is a hub of India's information technology industry and has a mixed population of Muslims and Hindus.

''This [attack] is to disturb the peaceful living of all communities in Andhra Pradesh," said Kiran Kumar Reddy, the state's chief minister.

It was the first major bomb attack in India since a September 2011 blast outside the High Court in New Delhi killed 13 people. The government has been heavily criticized for its failure to arrest perpetrators of previous bombings.

The United States condemned the attack, reported as Secretary of State John Kerry was meeting in Washington with Indian Foreign Secretary Ranjan Mathai.