Islamic Leader Assassinated in Kashmir; 25 Die as Troops Open Fire on Mourners : India: The violence comes as a U.S. envoy delivers appeal to the prime minister for talks with rival Pakistan.

Unidentified gunmen assassinated the top religious leader of Jammu and Kashmir state early Monday, touching off an explosion of violence that left at least 25 dead in the embattled Himalayan border region.

Estimates by police, hospital officials and eyewitnesses put the number of dead at 25 to 40 and the wounded at 200 to 300.

Most of the victims were shot by Indian security forces after they seized the body of Mirwaiz Maulvi Farooq, the imam of the state’s largest mosque, who was shot at least six times by three unidentified gunmen in his home on the banks of Kashmir’s Nagin Lake.

The killings marked one of the worst days of violence in the six months since Indian troops cracked down on an armed independence movement in the semiautonomous state, and they coincided with the delivery of a personal appeal from President Bush in New Delhi for an end to the growing tension between India and Pakistan over the crisis in Kashmir.

Farooq’s murder came just hours before an envoy from the Bush Administration met with Indian Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh to appeal for dialogue between India and Pakistan. Tensions between the two have been high since the Kashmiri nationalist uprising began late last year.

Robert M. Gates, the U.S. deputy national security adviser, used the 35-minute meeting with Singh to deliver a letter from Bush asking India and Pakistan to talk rather than fight. The letter also stressed that the United States is not trying to play a moderator’s role in the conflict.

An Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman said later that, during the meetings, Singh “virtually rejected” any formal discussions with Pakistan over the Kashmir issue, which has triggered two of the three wars that India and its Islamic neighbor have fought since independence in 1947.

Reliable sources said Singh reiterated an earlier appeal to Washington to pressure Pakistan to cut all assistance to the Kashmiri secessionists, adding that war will remain a possibility while such aid continues. India justifies its harsh crackdown in Kashmir, where more than 350 people have been killed this year, by claiming that Pakistan is interfering directly in the conflict.

Pakistan has voiced its support for Kashmir’s “self-determination,” but there is still no concrete evidence to back the Indian charge of direct military aid from the Pakistanis.

The U.S. delegation, including John Kelly, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern and South Asian affairs, and Richard Haas, a special adviser to Bush on the region, met with Pakistan’s President Ghulam Ishaq Khan on Sunday. They conveyed a similar appeal for bilateral talks but were unable to see Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who is touring Islamic nations to enlist support for Pakistan’s position on Kashmir.

As the formal U.S. peace appeals were being delivered by Gates, a crowd estimated at 12,000 and watched by thousands more gathered outside the Kashmiri hospital where Imam Farooq’s bullet-riddled body had been taken after he was gunned down in his home in the Kashmiri capital of Srinagar.

Authorities said the crowd seized the imam’s body from the hospital and paraded with it until security forces moved in to recover the body. The deaths and injuries occurred in that conflict and three other demonstrations protesting Farooq’s assassination.

A curfew was reimposed in the city, which has been turned into a virtual armed camp by the thousands of Indian troops deployed there to keep order six months ago.

The Indian government said that “militants” and “subversives” were responsible for Farooq’s death, but spokesmen for the secessionists blamed it on Hindu fanatics and Indian government operatives.

“I think it is the work of Indian intelligence or Hindu fanatics because he (Farooq) has been supportive of the militant groups,” Amanullah Khan, a leader of the banned Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, told Reuters news agency.

Diplomats and other independent analysts in New Delhi also suspected the hand of India’s increasingly popular Hindu fundamentalists, who have been the most vocal supporters of Singh’s get-tough policy on Kashmir.

But one diplomat said rival militant groups may have killed the cleric in an effort to silence moderate voices in the fractious independence movement. Until the Kashmir crisis escalated amid India’s military crackdown, the imam had been a supporter of New Delhi’s policies in the overwhelmingly Muslim state, which was promised broad autonomy when it opted to join India rather than Pakistan when the subcontinent was partitioned 43 years ago.