Passengers Unharmed in Attack; First Buses Head Across Kashmir

Separatist militants Wednesday attacked a government compound where Indian security forces were guarding passengers on the eve of the first scheduled bus service in nearly six decades across the line dividing Kashmir.

Despite the violence, buses from the Indian and Pakistani sides headed toward the frontier this morning.

Authorities said at least two attackers were killed and at least six people were wounded in the intense gun battle, but the 22 bus passengers were safe.

The state tourist reception center, which was next door to the passengers’ hostel, was engulfed in flames that rose 20 feet into the air. The blaze spewed columns of thick black smoke over Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian-held Kashmir.

The passengers were housed in the compound because militants had threatened to kill anyone who tried to make the bus trip between Indian and Pakistani areas of the divided territory.

“The caravan of peace is now on its way. No one can stop it,” Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said. Associated Press reported that passengers on the first two buses hugged him before departing.

Sonia Gandhi, president of India’s ruling Congress Party, also greeted passengers before they boarded the buses.

“The peace process can’t be derailed,” she said.

Many Kashmiris see the routes as the most significant achievement so far in a peace process between India and Pakistan that began in 2003.

Calling the attack “an unfortunate development,” Singh told an Indian news channel that recent militant operations were “desperate responses by those who don’t want the dialogue [with Pakistan] to go ahead. We will not allow them to derail the dialogue and the peace process.”

Pakistani officials also condemned the attack.

“These Kashmiris have committed no crime,” Pakistani Foreign Minister Mian Khursheed Mehmood Kasuri said at a news conference in Islamabad. “All they wanted to do is to meet their loved ones, who have been separated, in some cases, for three or four decades.”

Before the attack, ticket-holder Khalid Hussain, 60, said he and his wife, Naseem Firdous, 58, would make the trip despite receiving telephone death threats at their home.

“I’m not a staunch Muslim,” Hussain said. “But I can say that I have blind faith in my God on these lines: Life is given by the almighty Allah, and he will take mine when he wants.”

The plan is for the Indian passengers to be dropped off on their side of the Line of Control, walk across a bridge to Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and board other buses to that territory’s capital, Muzaffarabad.

India has been preparing for weeks to welcome the first visitors from the other side of Kashmir as well, but the Pakistani government did not say Wednesday whether its citizens would be allowed to cross into Indian-held Kashmir as part of the inaugural service.

The attack embarrassed Indian authorities, who hope the renewed travel link will demonstrate that a 16-year separatist insurgency is on its last legs.

They are eager to show that the territory is safe for tourists, who have been arriving in increasing numbers over the last two years.

The Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir is roughly two-thirds of a territory that was a separate principality at the time British rule over India ended in 1947. The state has a heavy concentration of security forces.

But Indian authorities have tightened security even further in an attempt to protect the 75-mile bus route running from Srinagar through some of the militants’ last rural strongholds to the Line of Control.

For days, Indian soldiers and police have been stopping vehicles on the route to check identity cards and search for weapons.

Patrols are scouring fields, roadside ditches and potential ambush spots for concealed explosives or other weapons.

They also thoroughly searched five small buses, which were then put under tight security. Only two were used today.

Militants have left no doubt they are deadly serious about trying to stop the buses. On Tuesday, militants set off a small roadside bomb on the route that injured three civilians. In recent days, troops using sniffer dogs have discovered at least two other roadside bombs. The security forces also uncovered an anti-tank rocket.

Four militant groups have threatened to attack bus passengers. Hard-line separatists see the bus link as an effort by the Indian government to facilitate the permanent division of the territory by easing travel across the Line of Control.

Working from a passenger list that was supposed to be secret, militants have contacted ticket-holders to warn them away from the buses.

Hussain received his death threat March 31. Police later told him that the call was traced to London, according to Hussain, who said officers reported the same thing to another passenger who received a similar threat.

Hussain and his wife planned to visit her relatives for the first time since they fled the 1947 bloodbath in India and Pakistan that followed independence from Britain.

Hussain’s father and six other male family members were killed by Hindus enraged by the division of the subcontinent, he said. Hussain, then 2, was rescued along with a brother, a sister and their mother by Hindu neighbors.

Hussain empathizes with militants fighting today for what he believes is a misguided cause.

“I believe that these [militant] youths are also our own children, and they have just been misled and took a wrong path,” he said. “These youths don’t understand the fact that this bold step, which has been taken by both sides, has been taken with a view to restore peace and normalcy in this region.”

In the village of Kreeri, Hejira Begum, 75, was waiting to see her 61-year-old brother for the first time since 1947.

The brother, a retired judge, is due on the bus today from Pakistani territory.

As she waited for the reunion, Begum worried that militants might visit her home to punish her brother for crossing the line.

“But we’re more happy than afraid,” she said.

Times special correspondent Mubashir Zaidi in Islamabad contributed to this report.