12 Wounded in Kashmir Grenade Attack

Suspected Islamic militants hurled a grenade at a convoy in Indian-controlled Kashmir on Sunday, wounding 12 people, police said. The grenade was thrown at a convoy of paramilitary force vehicles, but it missed its target and exploded on a busy road in Bijbehara town in India’s northern Jammu-Kashmir state, a police officer said on condition of anonymity. The blast wounded 10 civilians and two policemen, he said. The officer blamed separatist rebels for the attack and said the target was a convoy of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police passing through Bijbehara, about 30 miles south of Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu-Kashmir. Separately, Indian army soldiers killed four suspected rebels in a gunbattle in Surigam, a frontier village 60 miles north of Srinagar, a police statement said. The statement did not give further details. More than a dozen Islamic militant groups have been fighting Indian security forces since 1989 seeking Kashmir’s independence from India or merger with neighboring Pakistan. The insurgency has killed more than 63,000 people, mostly civilians. Full Story