Ten Killed in Kashmir Car Bomb Blast

S R I N A G A R, India, Aug. 10 -- Ten people were killed and 24 were wounded by a powerful bomb blast in Indian Kashmir today as a guerrilla group that had held peace talks with New Delhi only last week returned to violence.

Hizbul Mujahideen, which called off a brief but unprecedented ceasefire earlier this week, claimed responsibility for the bomb which went off in a car outside a bank in Srinagar, the summer capital of India’s Jammu and Kashmir state.

The pro-Pakistan group said in a statement faxed to Reuters in Islamabad that bigger military operations would be carried out in the insurgency-plagued Himalayan state if India persisted with its “traditional intransigence.”

It was the first major attack since Hizbul Mujahideen — blaming New Delhi for refusing to engage with arch-foe Pakistan on the future of Kashmir — on Tuesday ended its 15-day-old truce and urged its cadres back into the fray.

A government official in New Delhi said eight police officers, a photojournalist and a shopkeeper died in the blast, which wrecked vehicles, damaged buildings and sent sheets of metal flying through the air in the heart of the city.

The wounded included security force personnel and seven photojournalists.

‘Huge Flame Explosion’

“It was a huge flame … explosion, I only remember some security men who were burning in flames running toward me. I heard several gunshots, after that I fell unconscious,” said Habib Naqash of the Asian Age newspaper.

Naqash, Bilal Butt of Asian News International and Reuters photographer Fayaz Kabli were among the journalists who were wounded in the explosion.

Doctors said Kabli was suffering from shock and had splinter injuries in one leg, but was out of danger.

The bomb, which went off in an Indian-made Ambassador car, was believed to have been triggered by remote control.

Witnesses said the explosion came five minutes after a grenade attack at around 12.30 p.m (0700 GMT). Many of the security personnel and journalists who had rushed to the site of the grenade attack were then caught in the blast.