Author:
Publication: BBC News
Date: May 14, 2002
At least 30 people have been killed
in Indian- administered Kashmir as suspected separatists attacked an army
camp.
The dead include women and children
as well as the three attackers.
The militants, who were wearing
army uniforms, also fired at passengers in a bus they had been travelling
on before entering the camp, officials said.
The attack is the bloodiest since
nearly 40 people died in a raid on the state assembly in the summer capital
Srinagar last October.
It coincides with a visit to Delhi
by US Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca aimed at cooling tensions
between India and Pakistan over Kashmir.
Mrs Rocca - who is having talks
in Delhi before going on to Pakistan - condemned the latest attack.
"It is precisely this type of barbaric
terrorism that the international war on terrorism is determined to stop",
she said.
Indian officials have said she will
be shown evidence that Pakistan is still backing militant activity.
Gun battle
The gunmen arrived by bus at the
army camp at Kaluchak 10 kilometres (six miles) south of Jammu - the state's
winter capital - early on Tuesday morning.
Officials said they opened fire
indiscriminately and threw grenades, killing seven passengers before storming
the camp gate.
"We were asked to get off the bus
and as we were getting down they started firing," a passenger told Star
News television.
Television pictures of the bus showed
shattered windows, holes blown in the side and broken glass on the floor,
Reuters news agency reported.
The men then barged into an area
of the camp housing family quarters, workshops and canteens.
"They had AK 47s, they were firing
all around, they had hand grenades, they had explosives... they wired the
houses with the explosives, Major General Mohan Pandey told reporters.
The attackers were eventually cornered
and killed during a gun battle with soldiers and police that lasted more
than two hours.
The BBC's Binoo Joshi, reporting
from Jammu, says it is the first time that an army camp so close to Jammu
has been targeted in such a fashion, although there have been a series
of similar attacks on camps in other districts.
No organisation has admitted carrying
out the attack, but Indian officials suspect Pakistan- based groups such
as Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad.
A government minister in Islamabad
said Pakistan rejected Indian accusations that it was sponsoring such cross-border
attacks.
Tensions
A senior US defence department official
in Washington told reporters on Monday there was a "large risk" of war.
"The governments of India and Pakistan
have an enormous interest in bringing tensions down and the risks of war
down", said Defence Undersecretary Douglas Feith.
Both countries still have huge numbers
of troops massed along their common border.
They have fought two of their three
wars over Kashmir since independence from Britain in 1947.
There are reports, denied by Indian
authorities, that India has put its troops on a heightened state of alert
along the disputed line of control in Kashmir and along the border between
India and Pakistan.
