Posted on 06/15/2002 10:31:28 AM PDT by lyonesse
SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - The chief minister of India's Jammu and Kashmir ( news - web sites) state escaped an attempt on his life on Saturday when two grenades were fired at a government building he was inaugurating in the region's main city, police said.
In a separate attack later in the day, two children were killed and two people injured when unidentified militants hurled a grenade and fired on a group of Hindu devotees east of Jammu, the state's winter capital.
The attack on Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah came as Indian and Pakistani troops, locked in a tense confrontation over disputed Kashmir, traded fresh fire across their frontier.
Police said one of the rifle grenades fired at Abdullah had failed to explode and the other had missed buildings and exploded in the air without causing any casualties.
Abdullah was opening a state education board building in the Bemina residential area of Srinagar, the summer capital of the state at the heart of the hostility with Pakistan.
"One grenade exploded in the air, while another fell about 600 yards (meters) away from the venue of the function. No harm was caused," police said in a statement. In the later incident, at Kishtwar in Doda district, 160 miles east of Jammu, a police official said a group of devotees was climbing down a hill after attending an annual temple festival when the militants lobbed a grenade and opened fire.
"Four people were injured in the attack, two of them seriously. They later succumbed to their injuries," the official said. He added that the two dead were children.
No group has said it attacked the pilgrims, but a man identifying himself as a spokesman of the previously unheard of Al-Madina Regiment telephoned the Reuters office in Srinagar and claimed responsibility for the attack on Abdullah
"Our Mujahideen (holy warriors) carried out the grenade attack. Our Mujahideen also killed two security force personnel in a separate attack," the man told Reuters.
The caller did not elaborate. Police said there had been another militant attack on Saturday but only one soldier was killed.
Five other people including two militants were killed in separate clashes between security forces and militants in the Kashmir region, police said.
Abdullah, who has escaped many attempts on his life and is guarded by elite commandos, is hated by separatist militants in India's only Muslim-majority state for his strong pro-India stand.
About a dozen Muslim militant groups are fighting New Delhi's rule in the Himalayan state.
HOSTILE NEIGHBORS
Rebels have killed several members of Abdullah's National Conference party in Kashmir since a rebellion against Indian rule there erupted 12 years ago.
India accuses Pakistan of stoking the revolt by training and arming fighters and sending them across a cease-fire line dividing Indian and Pakistani Kashmir.
Pakistan denies the accusation saying it only offers political support to what it describes as the legitimate campaign for self-determination by the Kashmiri people.
The nuclear-armed neighbors massed nearly a million troops along their border after India blamed Pakistan-based groups for a deadly attack on its parliament last December.
The tension spiralled after a bloody militant raid on an Indian army camp in Kashmir in May.
The threat of war has eased slightly in recent days following U.S.-led diplomatic efforts to pull the rivals back from the brink but analysts warn that another major militant attack could trigger an Indian strike against Pakistan.
The two countries have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir since their independence from Britain in 1947.
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