NEW DELHI, India -- Sikh extremists indiscriminately fired submachine guns in a bloody rampage through four New Delhi neighborhoods, killing 12 people and injuring 20 others, police said Sunday.
A Sikh extremist group claimed responsibility for the slayings, saying they were in revenge for anti-Sikh riots in November 1984 sparked by the assassination of prime minister Indira Gandhi by two Sikh bodyguards.
'Killings squads have reached (New) Delhi and they will take revenge for the November 1984 anti-Sikh riots,' a man claiming to represent the Bhindranwale Tiger Force of Khalistan said in a telephone call to a news organization in the Sikh holy city of Amritsar in Punjab.
A police official in New Delhi said an undetermined number of Sikh extremists 'in a pre-planned operation' carried out four attacks in fashionable neighborhoods in the south of the city Saturday night. He said the gunmen escaped.
He said a total of 12 people were killed, including two who succumbed to injuries in hospital, and 20 wounded in the four incidents, but did not give detailed casualty tolls from each attack.
Police issued a citywide alert, setting up roadblocks, tightening security at airports, railway stations and bus depots and conducting house-to-house searches.
The attacks were the first by Sikh extremists in New Delhi since the September 1985 assassination of Arjun Das, a city councilor of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's Congress (I) Party, who militants said helped organize the November 1984 riots that left more than 4,000 dead across northern India.
Saturday's violence was also the bloodiest by the separatists in New Delhi since more than 40 people died when a series of bombs concealed in transistor radios and cricket balls exploded in May 1985.
The police official said the bloodshed began at about 11 p.m. when a Sikh teenager armed with a submachine gun burst into a birthday party being held in a tent outside a house in the posh Greater Kailash neighborhood. News reports said about 100 people were at the gathering.
The extremist killed four people, including a woman, a child and a relative of the owner of the residence, the official said.
He said the gunman escaped in a car which was later found abandoned.
The Press Trust of India, however, said a number of extremists were involved and the men also lobbed grenades which failed to explode.
The domestic news agency said the assailants killed three people in the car they used to escaped then drove to a nearby shopping complex, where they sprayed bullets on crowds standing near an ice cream vendor and a cigarette shop.
The police official said extremists fired from a car at the complex, killing three people, including a street vendor.
He said Sikh gunmen also killed a couple out for an evening stroll outside a nearby apartment complex, and extremists struck at a fourth location, but no details were available. The official said it was not immediately known if all the attacks were carried out by the same assailants.
At the same time, Sikh extremists fighting for independence for predominantly Sikh Punjab killed another 14 people in four attacks in the northern state Saturday night, police said.
More than 400 people, including in excess of 300 civilians, have died in Sikh extremist violence in Punjab this year, one of the bloodiest periods ever.
New Delhi on May 11 dismissed Punjab's moderate Sikh government for its failure to curb the bloodshed and took direct control of the state.
