Bomb Outside New Delhi Court Kills At Least 10

A nurse tries to assist as a policeman carries a woman injured by the blast outside the High Court in New Delhi.

A bomb blast outside India's top court in the capital, New Delhi, today killed at least 10 people and injured dozens.

Officials said the bomb was apparently hidden in a briefcase. It went off near an entrance gate to the High Court where crowds of people had gathered.

Inian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh condemned the attack.

"This is a cowardly act of a terrorist nature," Singh said. "We will deal with it. We will never succumb to the pressure of terrorism. And this is a long war in which all political parties, all the people of India, have to stand united, so that the scourge of terrorism is crushed."

Investigators said they were probing an e-mail sent by an outlawed militant group active in South Asia -- the Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami (HUJI)-- claiming responsibility for the attack.

Condemning the attack, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said India would not be cowed by terrorism.

It was the first major attack in India since triple bombings in the financial capital, Mumbai, in July killed 26 people.

It has still not been established who carried out those attacks.

compiled from agency reports