SANDY TECHFANATIC

MUMBAI, India (AP) _ Police launched a massive manhunt in India's financial capital Tuesday, believing that the serial blasts that rocked the western Indian city of Ahmadabad over the weekend, killing 45 people, were hatched in a Mumbai suburb. Four cars used in the weekend bombings were stolen from in the suburb of Navi Mumbai "New Mumbai," police said.

Meanwhile, police on Tuesday found 10 unexploded bombs in Surat, a city 280 kilometers (175 miles) south of Ahmadabad, said H.P. Singh, a senior Ahmadabad police officer. Police defused seven of the bombs and were working on the other three, Singh said.

He offered no details on what kind of explosives were found and said the investigation was ongoing. Authorities were also investigating the computer of an American citizen living there to find out if an e-mail claiming responsibility for the attack was sent from it, or if unknown attackers accessed his wireless Internet connection.

Navi Mumbai police chief Ramrao Wagh told The Associated Press that police have fanned out across the city to find the car thieves. He said all four cars were stolen in early July.

"Once we find the people who stole the cars, it will give us further clues about the blasts," he said. On Tuesday, Ahmadabad police said that after sifting through the blast scenes it appeared that 22 separate bombs exploded on Saturday, killing 42 people and wounding 183.

The death toll was lowered from the 45 originally reported due to several cases being reported twice amid the confusion, said Singh. Singh said two of the stolen vehicles had been used as car bombs in the attack, while two others had been discovered filled with explosives in Surat, a diamond-polishing hub.

Police issued a sketch of a young man believed to be linked to one of the cars in Surat, Singh said. Police were also investigating the computers belonging to Kenneth Haywood, a 48-year-old American citizen from California.

They seized his computer Monday after tracing an e-mail claiming responsibility for the attack to the machine. Police said Tuesday that Haywood was not a suspect and it appeared the bombers had accessed his wireless network connection to send the e-mail.

"He has never been detained, but we have called on him and questioned him as part of the investigation," said Parambir Singh, a senior officer in the Anti-Terrorism Squad. "He has said his e-mail ID was hacked and evidence we have gathered shows that his network was used to forward the mail.

" Singh said anyone on the two floors below Haywood's 15th floor apartment could have accessed his network. The Hindustan Times newspaper quoted Haywood, a manager at the consultancy company Campbell White, as saying that the telephone technician who set up his Internet connection had insisted he not change his default password.

An obscure Islamic militant group took credit for the Ahmadabad attack. "In the name of Allah the Indian Mujahideen strike again! Do whatever you can, within 5 minutes from now, feel the terror of Death!" said an e-mail from the group sent to several Indian television stations minutes before the blasts began.

The e-mail's subject line said "Await 5 minutes for the revenge of Gujarat," an apparent reference to 2002 riots in the western state that left 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, dead. The historic city of Ahmadabad was the scene of much of the 2002 violence.

Police said they believe the bombers used Navi Mumbai as the headquarters to plan the attack because it was a nondescript suburb and their activities would likely go undetected. Attackers "try to find hideouts in suburbs," Wagh said.

"They try to find places and set up hideouts near a (city) but a distance away." Navi Mumbai is a quiet suburb to the north of Mumbai that over the past two years has become a popular destination for call-center and back-office operations of multinational companies.

India has been hit repeatedly by bombings in recent years. Nearly all have been blamed on Islamic militants who allegedly want to provoke violence between India's Hindu majority and Muslim minority, although officials rarely offer hard evidence implicating specific groups.

___ Associated Press reporter Matthew Rosenberg contributed to this report from Ahmadabad.