"It certainly does not look like an explosive. It looks like some fault in the air-conditioning duct," Ahmad Javed, the joint commissioner of police in Bombay, India's financial hub, told Reuters.

Police said sniffer dogs had not detected any trace of explosives.

The blast took place in a food court shared by McDonalds Corp and 'Desi Deli', which specializes in Indian cuisine, at Bombay Central, a bustling railway station, police said.

"We are shocked and concerned at the incident in the food court at Mumbai (Bombay) Central station. We are one of the outlets at the food court," McDonald's said in a statement.

"Right now for us the greatest concern is for the eight people who have got injured," Amit Jatia, managing director of McDonald's, Bombay, was quoted in the statement as saying.

The public relations company representing McDonald's said two of its staff and six customers were taken to hospital.

The Bombay blast came four days after a bomb on a bus killed two people in the city and on the 10th anniversary of the destruction of a disputed mosque that triggered religious riots across the country.

In Indonesia, police said a blast Thursday that killed three people at a McDonald's restaurant on Sulawesi island was a bomb and was timed to explode when the restaurant was full of people celebrating the end of the Muslim fasting month Ramadan. (Reporting by Maria Abraham and Jayashree Lengade)  
 
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