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Car bomb explodes outside army headquarters in India's Kashmir

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December 26, 2000 

SRINAGAR--(UNB/AP) - A suicide bomber set off a car explosion outside the Indian army headquarters in Kashmir's capital on Monday, killing three civilians and four soldiers and wounding 20 other people, officials said.

Those dead included three of the seven soldiers who died in hospital hours after the explosion in Srinagar, that occurred nearly 50 meters (yards) from the heavily guarded entrance of the army headquarters, police and home ministry officials said. Some shops across the street burned down following the blast.

The bomber was among those killed, army officials said.

"The car was moving when the bomb went off. It seems the person in the car was trying to get inside the headquarters and set off the explosion when he realized he could not," Major Bharat A. Shahane, the army spokesman in Srinagar, told The Associated Press. The soldiers wounded in the attack were standing outside the headquarters gate.

A Pakistan-based rebel group called the Jamaat-ul Mujahedeen claimed responsibility for the explosion in telephone calls to local newspaper offices. Within hours, a spokesman for the Jaish-e-Mohammad, another guerrilla group, also claimed it had carried out the attack.

Also Monday, a series of bomb explosions also rocked cities across the border in Pakistan, injuring 45 people. The first bomb ripped through a crowded market in the eastern border city of Lahore, injuring 36 people, while the second bomb exploded at a railway station in Faisalabad, also in eastern Punjab province, wounding three people, officials said.

The third explosion occurred in a passenger bus in Hyderabad in the southern Sindh province, injuring six people. The fourth explosion in Kharian, 165 kilometers (70 miles) north of Lahore, did not cause any injuries.

Police blamed arch-rival India of seeking retaliation for Friday night's attack on India's historic Red Fort in the heart of its capital of New Delhi, in which two soldiers and a civilian guard were killed. Two gunmen entered the Red Fort and escaped after attacking an army supply depot there.

Indian authorities did not immediately respond to the accusation, but New Delhi has in the past denied similar charges from Islamabad. India in turn alleges that Pakistan arms and funds the insurgency in Indian Kashmir, while Pakistan says it offers only moral and diplomatic support to the militants.

The Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, a Pakistan-based Islamic group fighting to separate the Himalayan province of Kashmir from Hindu-majority India, claimed responsibility for the Red Fort attack. Kashmiri militants regularly attack Indian soldiers in the disputed Himalayan valley of Kashmir.

The attacks came as India and Pakistan began trying seek a resolution of their 50-year-old dispute over Kashmir. The neighbors have fought two wars over the region, divided between them since independence in 1947.

India extended a unilateral cease-fire in its portion of Kashmir last week, and Pakistan responded by withdrawing some of its troops along the 1972 line that divides the province.

India says the insurgency has claimed 30,000 lives. Human rights groups say at least 60,000 civilians, soldiers and militants have been killed.