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Marlboros to make Bangladesh debut

DHAKA: The world's leading tobacco manufacturer Philip Morris has tied up with a Bangladeshi firm to sell Marlboro cigarettes in the local market, company officials said on Sunday.

The Marlboros will be manufactured and distributed by the Dhaka Tobacco Company, the company's chief executive officer Sheikh Bashir Uddin told reporters.

"This agreement will benefit both companies," Matteo Pelligrini, president of Philip Morris International, Asia, said in a statement.

Marlboro's entry into the Bangladesh market is likely to challenge the grip of British American Tobacco on high-priced brands, though Uddin declined to give a specific price per packet.

Dhaka Tobacco, the largest tobacco company in Bangladesh, produced 20 billion cigarettes in 2006 for an estimated market share of about 40 percent.

But the company, with annual sales of around 300 million dollars, dominates here only in terms of the low- and medium-priced brands.

Bangladesh is one of the most profitable tobacco markets in the world, with annual sales of around one billion dollars.

More than 40 percent of Bangladeshi men smoke, according to industry figures.

Philip Morris controlled 15.4 percent of the global cigarette market in 2006. T

he US giant's brands led by Marlboro and L&M are sold in more than 160 countries.

India blames 'terrorists' as blasts kill 40

Indian security forces launched a manhunt on Sunday for those behind twin bombings in the southern city of Hyderabad that killed 40 people, with officials pinning the blame on Islamic militants.

HYDERABAD, India: Indian security forces launched a manhunt on Sunday for those behind twin bombings in the southern city of Hyderabad that killed 40 people, with officials pinning the blame on Islamic militants.

Police have reportedly found seven more unexploded bombs in the city.

More than 50 others were injured in the blasts late Saturday, which ripped through a packed street restaurant in this mixed Hindu-Muslim city and an amusement park auditorium where hundreds were watching a sound and light show.

Federal authorities deployed paramilitary forces to the city, the capital of Andhra Pradesh state, to ensure that ethnic tensions did not flare up following the near-simultaneous attacks, for which no one has yet claimed responsibility.

"The death toll is 40 in yesterday's two bomb blasts.... The victims are from all sections of society -- they included Hindus and Muslims," the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh state, Y.S. Rajshekhar Reddy, told reporters.

More than a dozen of the wounded were in serious condition.

"One terrorist group or the other, which is bent on destroying the unity of the country, is certainly involved," said Sriprakash Jaiswal, India's minister of state for home. Reddy said "available information" pointed to the involvement of terrorist organisations based in neighbouring Pakistan and Bangladesh.

He condemned the blasts as the "cruellest acts against humanity" and appealed for calm in the city, where about 40 percent of the 6.5 million people are Muslim.

"We have launched a manhunt for those who committed this dastardly crime," Hyderabad police chief Balwinder Singh said Sunday. Security was beefed up here on Sunday, as some 10,000 Hindu weddings were planned on what is seen as an auspicious day, police said.

Police had located another bomb in a cinema on Saturday and defused it before it exploded.

Forensic experts were also dispatched to aid local efforts to trace the culprits. Federal Home Minister Shivraj Patil was due to visit Hyderabad later Sunday. On Saturday, rescue workers carried out bodies burnt beyond recognition at the popular eatery.

At the auditorium, severed arms and legs lay scattered around.

"I saw limbs flying around me and blood splattering," 29-year-old Romanna, who goes by one name, told AFP as she waited for help for a chest wound outside the amusement park.

There was chaos at the city's main Osmania hospital as wailing relatives thronged the hallways, searching for their missing loved ones. After an emergency cabinet meeting, Reddy announced compensation of 500,000 rupees (12,200 dollars) for families of those killed.

The explosions came three months after 11 people were killed in a bombing at the city's famed 17th-century Mecca Mosque. Police have still not named any single group as suspects in that attack.

India has suffered a series of recent blasts that authorities have blamed on Islamic militants seeking to upset a peace process between India and Pakistan and stir Hindu-Muslim violence.

"We're seeing a pattern of attacks every two to three months somewhere or other in the country on soft targets," said Ajai Sahni, head of the New Delhi-based Institute for Conflict Management.

In the deadliest, seven blasts on the rail network in the country's financial hub Mumbai killed 186 people in July 2006.

Indian authorities say they believe Pakistan-based guerrilla groups fighting its rule in Indian Kashmir are using Indian Muslim militants to stage attacks.

The attacks "appear to be linked to what we call Pakistan-backed Islamic terrorist groups," said analyst Sahni.

Pakistan, which has fought two wars over Kashmir with India, routinely denies any involvement in attacks on Indian soil.