JAMMU, Feb 10 (2000) – Nine people were killed as violence flared across the disputed region of Kashmir Thursday, a police spokesman said.
Three of the dead were killed when a bomb ripped through a train en route to Calcutta, police said.
“The blast occurred in the Sealdah Express in Baira, 30 kilometres (18.6 miles) south of Jammu … 10 of the injured are in a critical condition,” the spokesman said.
The spokesman said the bomb went off at around 06.00 p.m (12.30 GMT), half-an-hour after the train had left the Bijaypur station, and added that the police suspected Pakistani-backed militants were behind the blast.
He said ten others were seriously injured in the bomb blast and seven other compartments were derailed.
In a separate incident six others, including two police personnel, were shot dead by Muslim separatist rebels overnight Thursday in Kashmir, the spokesman said.
The official said the attacks took place in the neighbouring villages of Palpora and Pakipora, some 30 kilometres (18 miles) from the state summer capital Srinagar.
The rebels first stormed the home of police official Ghulam Mohammed Reshi in Palpora and shot him dead along with two of his daughters, one of whom was also working in the police force.
Rebels later killed three people in the other village.
Hundreds of Pakipora residents blocked a highway in protest against the killings, which they claimed were carried out by Indian security personnel.
“The villagers shouted anti-India and pro-Islamic slogans and blamed the police Task Force (a counter-insurgency wing) for the killings,” a witness said.
“They attacked an army truck, broke its window panes. The army personnel fired at the mob, critically injuring a civilian,” he said.
More than 25,000 people have been killed in violence linked to the Muslim insurgency launched in Kashmir in 1989.
Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state, is claimed by both India and Pakistan and has been the cause of two of the three wars between the South Asian rivals.
