‘Martyrs Ward’ Reflects Muslim Zeal Over Kashmir : India: The first Pakistani casualties are reported. The region has been the match igniting two wars.

He lies in a dingy hospital ward, his left arm in a thick cast, but Mohammed Bashir says he is only sorry he was not killed when he and his friends tried to invade India.

“I would be proud if I was shaheed, “ or martyred, the 23-year-old laborer explained.

So Bashir said he will try again to liberate India’s state of Jammu and Kashmir when he recovers.

“I will go again,” he promised, “but with weapons.”

Bashir and the 10 other wounded Muslim youths in the so-called “martyrs ward” at the Allama Iqbal Hospital here are the question mark that hangs over the increasingly tense India-Pakistan border around Kashmir.

On Monday, several thousand unarmed Pakistanis marched through tall grass to a border crossing five miles north of this sprawling frontier town. Ignoring Pakistani guards, several dozen rushed across to plant homemade flags on the Indian side while others set fire to the grass.

Indian troops fired first into the air, then into the surging crowd, officials said. A 13-year-old boy was shot in the head and killed. At least a dozen others were wounded.

After months of violence and scores of deaths in Kashmir, the incident marked the first Pakistani casualties in the current unrest.

Jammu and Kashmir, as the region is officially called, has been the cause of two of Pakistan’s three wars with India, in 1948 and 1965. After a U.N. cease-fire in 1949, the area was divided by a line of control. India integrated its part of the region into India as the state of Jammu and Kashmir, despite protests from Pakistan and calls for a plebiscite. The northern part of the region remains under Pakistan’s control.

Unsanctioned incursions by Muslim zealots helped spark the 1948 and 1965 wars, and anxious government officials and diplomats in New Delhi and Islamabad fear it could happen again.

“We don’t want any situation on the ground that will lead to a conflict,” J. N. Dixit, India’s high commissioner in Islamabad, said by phone after the Monday shooting. “But intrusions into our territory we will have to resist.”

“If they resort to mass killing, let them kill us,” responded Sardar Abdul Qayyum, president of Pakistan’s part of Kashmir, who says he wants some day to lead 100,000 people across the border.

Military officials have played down the incident and said that no special border alerts or troop movements have been ordered. “Everybody thinks this was a mistake,” said one officer.

Kashmir’s violence was contained until Monday inside the rugged Himalayan region that sticks up like India’s sore thumb between Pakistan and China.

Starting in 1988, a growing movement of pro-independence and pro-Pakistan groups have fought Indian troops and police in the streets of Srinagar--summer capital of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir--and other towns, demanding an end to what they charge is corrupt Indian misrule. Observers say more than 200 have died on both sides.

The latest deaths in such clashes occurred Wednesday in Srinagar when two bystanders, both businessmen, were killed in an exchange of gunfire between separatists and security forces that started after a bomb explosion set fire to a hotel and several nearby shops. Five people were reported injured.

Pakistan has long demanded a U.N. plebiscite to let Kashmir determine its own future. About 65% of the people in Jammu and Kashmir state are Muslim, making it the only Muslim-majority state in predominantly Hindu India.

For now, Islamic fundamentalists are helping to lead the uprising. Extremist groups have mushroomed and one, known as Allah Tigers, closed bars, cinemas and beauty parlors and ordered women to wear veils in the once-bustling tourist center.

Here in Sialkot, where dozens of Indian and Pakistani tanks battled in the 1965 war, the Muslim connection helped draw about 100,000 townspeople into the dusty streets Monday to join a national strike and protest over the Indian crackdown on protests in Kashmir.

“People say the Indians are crushing the Kashmiris,” said Dr. Arif Sheikh, who works in the district hospital emergency room. “And only because they are Muslim.”

His colleague, Dr. Mohammed Saleem, said the parents of the boy who was killed on the border, poor farmers from nearby Patessar village, know he did not die in vain.

“They say he is a martyr,” Saleem said. “He has sacrificed his life for Islam, and for the cause of freedom in Kashmir.”

The religious zeal was clear inside the dimly lit concrete “martyr’s ward,” where the wounded men lay under red blankets as relatives offered quiet comfort and cold curry.

“I did not care for my life,” said Sargit Hussain, 25, a bricklayer, when asked how he got shot in the hip. “I just rushed with my flag.”

“ Inshallah, time will come,” he added quietly. “We will get Kashmir.”