Indian Major Among Bomb Victims in Contested Kashmir

An Indian army major was among the 10 soldiers killed Sunday in a roadside bombing, the most lethal separatist attack in Indian-held Kashmir since New Delhi began withdrawing troops from the disputed region last month.

Witnesses said the blast ripped the sport-utility vehicle apart, killing the soldiers and their civilian driver. The explosion left a crater several feet deep.

After a preliminary investigation, police said the remotely triggered bomb was made of plastic explosives packed into a water pipe under a road near Batapota, a village about 25 miles south of Srinagar, the summer capital of India’s Jammu and Kashmir state.

“Though the investigation is still in progress, we believe that the blast was triggered with a remote-controlled device,” a senior police officer said.

In the last week, militants have killed more than two dozen members of India’s security forces in Jammu and Kashmir.

The Hizbul Mujahedin, the largest of several militant groups fighting Indian rule here, reportedly claimed responsibility for the attack. The group’s headquarters is in the Pakistan-held portion of Kashmir, where its leader, Syed Salahuddin, regularly issues statements. He also heads the United Jihad Council, an alliance of militant groups based in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-held Kashmir.

India and Pakistan are scheduled to resume negotiations this month on a proposed bus service that would link Muzaffarabad and Srinagar for the first time since Britain granted the countries independence in 1947. That same year, the two countries went to war over Jammu and Kashmir, a princely state that had been under British control.

India accuses Pakistan of arming and training militants in the territory, but Islamabad insists that the guerrillas are waging a freedom struggle that it sympathizes with but does not aid.

Both countries say they are committed to finding a peaceful solution to their 57-year dispute, but Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has complained recently that India is moving too slowly and refusing to negotiate a final pact.

Last month, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh ordered about 10,000 of the estimated 250,000 troops in the territory to pull out. The state’s paramilitary police units have taken over in the few areas from which the soldiers withdrew.

Following Singh’s announcement, Indian commanders said militants had suffered heavy losses and claimed their morale was sinking. A fence along most of the heavily fortified cease-fire border, known as the Line of Control, that divides the territory and makes it difficult for guerrilla reinforcements to cross from Pakistani-held areas, Indian officials say.

As peace talks between the governments drag on, the militants have been stepping up attacks and using bolder tactics. In October, a rare suicide car bombing on an army convoy south of Srinagar, killed four soldiers and a civilian, and wounded 30 people.

The Jaish-e-Muhammad militant group, which is also based in Pakistan, claimed responsibility.

Sunday’s blast targeted soldiers returning to camp after a counterinsurgency operation. They were traveling in a taxi, as some troops have begun doing to evade militant attacks.

The army and local police cordoned off the area surrounding the blast, but by nightfall, no arrests had been made.

A caller claiming to be the Hizbul Mujahedin’s spokesman told a local news agency that the militants escaped after grabbing six AK-47 assault rifles, a machine gun and three radio sets from the dead troops. The area is a known Hizbul Mujahedin stronghold.

On Saturday, five paramilitary policemen and two suicide attackers were killed in an assault on a Special Operations Group camp in the northern Kashmiri town of Sopore, known for its apple orchards. The two attackers, called fedayeen, stormed the paramilitary police camp Friday evening, hurling grenades and firing automatic rifles. The siege ended the next day when the militants were killed, the troops said.

Special correspondent Tak reported from Srinagar and staff writer Watson from Kabul, Afghanistan.