10 Are Killed in Kashmir Attack; Separatists Claim Responsibility

Suspected Islamic militants threw several grenades and exchanged gunfire with police Saturday at a 150-year-old Hindu temple in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir, police said. Ten people were killed and 20 were injured.

The Jammu and Kashmir Islamic Front, a rebel group whose leadership is based in Pakistan, later claimed responsibility in a telephone call to the Associated Press.

“We have done this because of violence against Muslims in India,” said a caller who identified himself as an aide of Bilal Beg, the group’s leader. “This is just the beginning.”

Police said two attackers got out of a white van at the temple, which is in a crowded shopping district in Jammu, the winter capital of Jammu and Kashmir state, and began launching the grenades.

One man carried a gun into the temple, and a shootout with security forces followed, authorities said. The man was later found dead inside the building.

A second suspect was killed before he could enter the shrine, police said.

Four policemen and four civilians also were killed, officials said. Most of the injured were civilians. Doctors at Government Medical College Hospital in Jammu said five of those hurt were in critical condition.

Authorities were searching for the driver of the van.

Inside the temple, which honors the god-king Ram, the floor was littered with cartridges and stained with blood. Shops and businesses in the city closed after the attack.

Pakistani Foreign Office spokesman Aziz Ahmed Khan released a statement condemning terrorism “anywhere and in all its forms and manifestations.”

The Jammu and Kashmir Islamic Front is one of more than a dozen Islamic groups fighting for the Kashmir region’s independence from mainly Hindu India.

In another assault Saturday, suspected guerrillas ambushed and killed two army soldiers in Baramulla, a town 35 miles north of the state’s summer capital, Srinagar, said M. Amin Shah, deputy inspector general of police.

Also Saturday, a Pakistani military spokesman said a boy, 4, was killed and five people were wounded during gunfire and shelling by India across the frontier in the northern Bhimber area of Kashmir.