Eight dead in grenade attack on Hindu pilgrims

At least eight people were killed and 12 seriously injured today when suspected Islamic militants lobbed a grenade and opened fire on a group of Hindu pilgrims in disputed Kashmir, Indian police said.

Police in Jammu, the winter capital of India’s northern Jammu-Kashmir state, said the assailants attacked the pilgrims at dawn.

The attack occurred on the route taken by hundreds of thousands of pilgrims to reach the Amarnath shrine, a cave in the Himalayas that houses an icy stalagmite worshipped as an incarnation of the Hindu God Shiva.