Kashmir Violence Leaves 16 Dead, Dozens Hurt

A new and terrifying wave of violence swept over the Himalayan region of Kashmir on Sunday, days after separatist guerrillas broke off peace talks and threatened fresh attacks on Indian security forces.

At least 16 people were killed and more than 40 people wounded in fighting across the region, where Muslim-inspired rebels are trying to expel the forces of the Hindu-majority Indian government in New Delhi.

Six Indian paramilitary soldiers died and 40 were injured in a pair of assaults--at least one a land mine--on a bus convoy ferrying Border Security Force troops to Srinagar, the summer capital of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. Both attacks occurred near the village of Kud, about 50 miles north of Kashmir’s winter capital, Jammu.

The BSF soldiers were moving to reinforce Indian troops in Srinagar who are on high alert ahead of celebrations Tuesday of India’s Independence Day. The run-up to Independence Day typically prompts intensified violence across the region.

Also Sunday, Indian officials said their security forces had shot dead 10 guerrillas in Udhampur, a town near the site where the Indian convoy came under attack. Elsewhere in Kashmir, three explosions wounded at least two people.

Sunday’s fighting seemed to snuff out any hope of an early reconciliation between the Indian government and the guerrillas, who began talking last month for the first time in years. Those talks got underway after Hizbul Moujahedeen, the largest of the Kashmiri rebel groups, declared a three-month cease-fire.

But the truce ended 15 days later when the group’s leaders abruptly demanded that Pakistan, India’s archrival, be included. The Indians refused, and the guerrillas went back to the battlefield. Four days ago, a bomb and grenade attack in Srinagar killed 14 people and injured 25. On Saturday, suspected rebels tossed a grenade near a mosque in the picturesque city and wounded four people.

The guerrillas promised more violence, and on Sunday they delivered. Hizbul Moujahedeen, which both called and canceled the cease-fire, claimed responsibility for both of Sunday’s attacks.

“We are committed to end Indian rule in Kashmir, and our activities will escalate,” Salim Hashmi, a spokesman for the group, told Associated Press.

The new round of fighting suggested not only that the budding peace process is over but that the volatile Indian region may be spinning out of control. Many people here and in the West worry that fighting over Kashmir could spark a nuclear war between India and Pakistan.

“If the trend of violence in Kashmir were to continue at the present rate, then there would only be graveyards and nothing else,” Fazal Haq Qureshi, the man who represented Hizbul Moujahedeen in negotiations with the Indians, said Sunday on Indian television.

Despite Sunday’s killings, both Hizbul Moujahedeen and India’s leaders said they were still willing to talk. Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said the attacks reflected a growing desperation among guerrillas and not the aspirations of the Kashmiri people.

“The terrorists are frustrated because they are not getting any support from any part of the world,” Vajpayee said. “These terrorists are also divided among themselves. But I am certain that, in Kashmir, the voice of those people who want peace will be ultimately heard.”

More than 30,000 people have died in Kashmir since 1990, when Pakistani-backed guerrillas launched an insurgency to separate the state from India. Some of the guerrilla groups are fighting for an independent Kashmir, while others want union with Pakistan. The government of Pakistan claims to provide only moral and political support for the guerrillas, but it is widely suspected of providing military support too.

The conflict dates to 1947, when Muslim-dominated Pakistan and Hindu-majority India broke apart as they seceded from the British Empire. Kashmir, with a Muslim majority, was split in two, with part going to Pakistan and the other to India. The two countries both claim the entire region, and twice they have gone to war over it.

Many of the guerrillas in Indian Kashmir are not Kashmiri but militants from Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries who claim to be fighting to free their Muslim brethren from Indian oppression. Several international groups have accused Indian security forces of human rights abuses in the region.

As war fears accelerated last spring, President Clinton visited India and Pakistan. Clinton urged the leaders of both countries to settle the Kashmir dispute, and for a time the war clouds seem to pass. The talks that followed Hizbul Moujahedeen’s cease-fire announcement prompted much optimism in New Delhi and Kashmir.

Just why the peace talks broke down was unclear, but many in India believe that they might have been torpedoed by the Pakistani government, which has long wanted to be part of any Kashmir settlement. The Indian government, for its part, has long insisted that Kashmir is an internal affair and that it will talk to Pakistan’s leaders only when they stop fomenting violence in the region.

Last week, a Western diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity, said it was also possible that hard-liners within Hizbul Moujahedeen had spiked the peace talks.

“Radical elements who don’t want peace may have tried to sabotage the negotiations,” the diplomat said. “In Kashmir, any time you step forward, you run the risk of being stabbed in the back.”