New Delhi ? A little-known group that police say has ties to Kashmir’s most feared militants claimed responsibility Sunday for a series of terrorist bombings that killed 59 people in New Delhi.

Authorities said they have gathered useful clues about the near-simultaneous blasts Saturday night that ripped through a bus and two markets crowded with people preparing for the Hindu festival of Diwali.

The attacks came at a particularly sensitive time as India and Pakistan were hashing out an unprecedented agreement to partially open the heavily militarized frontier that divides the disputed territory of Kashmir.

The agreement was finalized Sunday, and Indian officials appeared hesitant to blame Pakistan-based militants for the bombing, as they have for previous attacks during a 16-year-old insurgency by Islamic separatists in India’s part of Kashmir.

“We have lots of information but it is not proper to disclose it yet,” Indian Home Minister Shivraj Patil said after an emergency meeting of the Cabinet.

A man called a local news agency in Indian Kashmir to say the militant Islamic Inquilab Mahaz, or Front for Islamic Uprising, staged the bombings, which police said killed 59 people and wounded 210.

The caller, who identified himself as Ahmed Yaar Ghaznavi, said the bombings were “meant as a rebuff to the claims of Indian security groups” that militants had been wiped out by crackdowns and the earthquake.

A senior police officer said the caller’s name was not familiar to intelligence agencies.

However, while officials refused to comment on the claim of responsibility, they said the group is linked to the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyaba.