 |
||
|
||
|
||
Twelve people including two policemen and three pilgrims were killed in Indian Kashmir on Saturday when suspected separatist guerrillas attacked a route along which thousands of Hindus were trekking to a shrine.
Fifteen people were wounded in the attack which began when the suspected Muslim guerrillas set off a land mine. The rebels then opened fire on a police patrol on the route to the Amarnath mountain-cave shrine.
``Between 3:00 am and 4:00 am (2130 GMT and 2230 GMT) an explosion took place when a police party was patrolling near Sheshnag. Deputy Superintendent Police, Parveen Kumar, and a sub inspector died on the spot,'' a police official told Reuters.
He said the blast was followed by an exchange of fire between the militants and security forces.
``Twelve people including two policemen, a militant and nine civilians were killed in the explosion and firing,'' a senior paramilitary official said.
He said 15 people including five policemen were wounded.
The dead include at least three pilgrims, police said.
Pilgrims were stopped from using the route to the Amarnath shrine on Saturday.
In August last year 22 Hindu pilgrims were killed in an attack on the base camp which leads to the shrine. Nearly 80 other people were slaughtered in militant attacks across Jammu and Kashmir on the same day.
Hundreds of Indian soldiers have been patrolling the 46 km (29 mile) route in the Pahalagam area where the annual Hindu pilgrimage started early this month, 97 km (60 miles) southeast of Srinagar, the state's summer capital.
Nearly a dozen Muslim militant groups are fighting Indian rule in Jammu and Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state. New Delhi accuses Islamabad of giving military backing to the separatists but Pakistan says it provides only moral and diplomatic support.
No guerrilla group claimed responsibility for Saturday's attack, the latest in a rash of violence across the Himalayan state.
Nearly 200 people, most of them rebels, have been killed in the first 15 days of July, Indian officials say.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who has just returned from a summit with Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, said on Friday there could be no peace with India without a solution to the Kashmir problem.
India's External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh responded by reiterating India's claim to the region and criticizing Pakistan for sponsoring the rebellion.
The two countries have fought two
of their three wars over Kashmir where more than 30,000 people have been
killed in violence since the rebellion erupted in 1989.
|
||
|
||
|
||