Republic Day Bombs Kill 7 in Kashmir

As India celebrated its birthday as a republic, three powerful bombs exploded Thursday at a holiday rally in the disputed state of Kashmir, killing at least seven people and wounding 52 others but sparing the apparent target, state Gov. K.V. Krishna Rao, police said.

Rao, a retired Indian army general, was addressing a crowd of about 15,000 people at a stadium in the city of Jammu, the northern state’s winter capital, when the explosions began at 10:20 a.m., said Pyrelal Mattu, police superintendent.

Some witnesses said victims were hurled into the air. Panic broke out as thousands of people, including officials of the Jammu and Kashmir state government, surged frantically toward the exits at Maulana Azad Stadium.

An unruffled Rao, speaking later at a news conference, charged that there had been a “plot by Pakistan,” which claims Kashmir as its own, to assassinate him and thereby undermine plans to restore democratic rule in India’s only Muslim-majority state.

Such “cowardly attempts” will not deter his intentions to hold statewide elections at an unspecified future date, Rao said. At the moment, the state is directly administered by India’s central government.

Rao also vowed a shake-up of the state’s police and administration in the coming days, and he charged that even some senior officials had been aiding anti-India separatists--a tacit admission of New Delhi’s ongoing problems in maintaining control of the strife-torn state.

The bombings in Jammu occurred on Republic Day, the anniversary of the 1950 constitution that proclaimed India a sovereign, democratic republic.

In recent years, Islamic militants have staged attacks at holiday festivities in Kashmir to highlight their demands. Some seek independence for all of Kashmir, including the third of it that has been occupied by Pakistan since 1947, while others seek union with India’s unfriendly Muslim neighbor.