India Tests Missile That Is Nuclear-Ready

Fanning already high tensions on the subcontinent, India on Saturday tested a nuclear-capable missile, and Kashmiris massed by the thousands to mourn the victims of what Pakistani officials called a deadly rocket attack by India on a mosque.

Indian officials denied that they had fired projectiles into Pakistani-held territory. They claimed that Pakistani rockets meant to disrupt Friday’s Republic Day holiday in India went awry and slammed into the small town of Forward Kahuta in the Pakistani-controlled part of Kashmir.

Residents said more than 20 people were killed and 25 wounded when one rocket struck a crowd that had gathered outside a mosque after prayers marking the first Friday in the fasting month of Ramadan. Residents told reporters that the rockets came from the direction of India.

On the other side of the subcontinent, India said it successfully tested a longer-range version of the surface-to-surface Prithvi missile Saturday by launching it from a test site on the Orissa coast 150 miles into the Bay of Bengal. “All the mission objectives were fully met,” a Defense Ministry spokesman said.

It was the 15th test of the indigenously developed, liquid-fueled missile since Feb. 22, 1988, but the first to boost the range beyond 100 miles. The United States has urged India not to deploy the Prithvi, saying it will hurt, not help, Indian security.

“We think that deployment of this medium-range missile would go in the wrong direction and create new tensions, rather than to reduce tensions in what is arguably one of the most dangerous, least stable areas of the world right now,” Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said earlier this month.

U.S. officials say they believe that Pakistan would react by deploying M-11 missiles, also nuclear-warhead capable, that the United States charges Pakistan obtained from China in violation of the U.S.-sponsored Missile Technology Control Regime.

In the grief-stricken town of Forward Kahuta, located in Pakistani-controlled Azad (Free) Kashmir, about 10,000 people attended Muslim funeral prayers for the dead, which included at least three children, one 5 years old.

The bodies, draped in white sheets, were lined up near the heavily damaged mosque, and weeping friends and relatives filed by.

A spokesman for India’s Jammu and Kashmir state claimed that Pakistan had intended to disturb Republic Day celebrations in the town of Punch, on the Indian side of the “line of control” that divides the disputed Himalayan region. “They missed the target and hit their own mosque,” the spokesman claimed.

The U.N. Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan said Pakistan has asked it to investigate the attack but declined further comment.