Army searches for militants as Kashmir death toll rises

Indian troops were today hunting suspected Islamic guerrillas who killed at least 27 Hindu civilians when they attacked a crowded slum in Jammu-Kashmir state.

It was the deadliest attack in the disputed province since a May 14 strike by Islamic militants against a military base near Jammu that killed 34 people - mostly soldiers’ wives and children - which put India and Pakistan on a war footing.

The Indian Government did not immediately react to news of the attack.

But it was almost certain to raise tensions with Pakistan which had eased in recent weeks after Islamabad assured New Delhi that it would stop Islamic guerrillas from Pakistan infiltrating Indian-controlled Kashmir.

Up to eight suspected Islamic militants walked into the Qasimnagar slum on the outskirts of Jammu, winter capital of Jammu-Kashmir state, last night and threw three or four grenades before opening fire with automatic weapons, witnesses told police.

They fled after trading gunfire with security forces, who launched a manhunt in the area.

The army cordoned off parts of the shanty town and nearby forested hills and an intense search was on, officials said.

Most of those killed were women and children, an officer at the state’s police control room said.

Two of the 30 people injured in the attack died in hospital early Sunday, doctors said, taking the death toll to 27. Another 10 remained critically injured, doctors at the Government Medical College Hospital said.

State police chief Ashok Suri said authorities suspected that the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, the most feared of more than a dozen Pakistan-based Islamic groups fighting to secure Kashmir’s independence from India or merger with mostly Muslim Pakistan, was responsible for the attack.

No group has admitted responsibility. Such admissions rare over attacks in which many civilians are killed.

Indian Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani was scheduled to visit Jammu today to meet relatives of the victims.

Advani was also due to meet army and civil defence officials to review security in Jammu-Kashmir, an official said.

Most of the violence which has killed 60,000 people in the past decade in Jammu-Kashmir state, India’s only majority Muslim state, has occurred in Kashmir valley in the north, but in recent months Islamic groups have increasingly targeted Jammu, located in the south.

The militants attack Indian forces almost daily in the mountainous province.

The territorial dispute over Kashmir is at the core of five decades of hostility between India and Pakistan, which have fought two wars over the territory, which both countries claim in its entirety.

Pakistan denies giving material support to the militants, saying it provides them only moral and diplomatic support.

More than a million Indian and Pakistani soldiers are massed along their frontier. There were fears earlier this year that tension between the two nuclear-armed neighbours could lead to war.