Bomb hidden in video recorder kills three in market
The bomb exploded in the town of Rajouri, near the highly-militarised frontier which divides Kashmir into Indian and Pakistani sectors.
Seven of the wounded were badly hurt and several shops in the crowded market were badly damaged.
Police said the explosives-filled video recorder was placed near a shoe shop and set off by a timer device.
India accuses Pakistan of aiding Muslim militants fighting New Delhi’s rule in Kashmir but Islamabad says it only provides moral support. No militant group among the many which operate in Kashmir claimed responsibility for the Rajouri attack.
Police say more than 200 people, most of them rebels, have been killed in the Himalayan region in September while the rebels have said they have stepped up infiltration from Muslim Pakistan into Indian Kashmir.
Infiltration drops off in winter because the mountain passes along the frontier are snowbound. But before then, in the autumn, the crossings usually increase and so does the violence.
The surge in violence has cast a shadow on tentative peace steps between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, who were near the brink of a war over the territory last year.
Besides the bomb attack, police said seven suspected militants and four civilians were killed in separate gunbattles.
Police also said three civilians were killed and five wounded when Pakistani troops fired artillery shells overnight across the frontier.
Artillery duels across the 740km ceasefire line have continued despite the thaw between the two countries.
“During the preceding (Saturday) night, Pakistani troops resorted to unprovoked shelling in the Tulial sector,” a senior police officer said.
Kashmir, mainly Hindu India’s only Muslim-majority state, has been at the heart of decades of rivalry between the nuclear-armed neighbours and has been the cause of two of their three wars.
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