Author:
Publication: Associate
Free Press
Date: November 24, 2000
Suspected Kashmiri Muslim
separatists Friday slit the throats of five Hindus who they had kidnapped
in Indian-ruled Kashmir, three days after the murder of five Sikh and Hindu
truckers, police said.
A police spokesman said
members of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba extremist group abducted
seven men at gunpoint from a bus station near the town of Kishtwar, some
200 kilometres (125 miles) from the state summer capital Srinagar.
Ashkoor Wani, senior
police superintendent of Doda district, where Kishtwar is located, told
AFP that "four Lashkar-e-Toiba militants boarded a bus and kidnapped seven
Hindu passengers.
"They released two of
them after some Muslim passengers pleaded with the kidnappers to let them
go because they were old men," Wani said.
The police official said
the rebels took the five men to a nearby forest, about three kilometres
away from the bus depot.
"Police gave them chase.
We fired at them. But they managed to escape. We found five
bodies in the evening in the forest with their throats slit."
The Lashkar-e-Toiba has
neither denied nor accepted responsibility for the abductions.
On Tuesday night, suspected
Muslim rebels gunned down five Hindu and Sikh truckers in a move seen as
a clear rejection of New Delhi's ceasefire offer in Kashmir during the
Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which starts on November 29.
Militant groups rejected
the ceasefire initiative and some even pledged to step up attacks on the
security forces.
Muslim insurgency in
the Indian zone of Kashmir has claimed more than 34,000 lives since 1989.
India accuses Pakistan, which administers part of the disputed and divided
Himalayan province, of fomenting the unrest.
Islamabad denies the
charge but extends moral and diplomatic support to what it terms is a legitimate
expression for self-rule.
