Police arrest 2 suspects in bakery blast that killed 10 in western India

MUMBAI, India - Police have arrested two suspects in the bombing of a bakery popular with foreigners in western India that killed 10 people earlier this year, an officer said Wednesday.

One of the two Indians arrested this week has suspected links to a banned Pakistan-based Islamist rebel group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, senior police officer Rakesh Maria told reporters.

The arrests are the first in the Feb. 13 bakery bombing.

Two people posing as customers left a backpack containing the bomb in the German Bakery in Pune, 125 miles (200 kilometres) southeast of Mumbai. They are yet to be arrested, according to police.

Those killed included an Italian, an Iranian and two Sudanese.

Maria said the arrested men, Himayat Beg and Sheikh Bilal, procured explosives for the bombing.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack. Suspicions, however, quickly fell on Pakistan-linked Islamist militant groups like Lashkar, which has been blamed in the 2008 siege of Mumbai, the country's financial hub, that killed 166 people.

The bakery bombing was India's first major terrorist assault since the Mumbai attack.