Latest Kashmir Stories

By Sheikh Mushtaq SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - Minutes after a bomb exploded recently in Kashmir and wounded Indian soldiers, a senior member of an Islamist rebel group called local newspaper offices to claim responsibility for the blast. A few hours later, troops smashed the door of his hideout and arrested the militant "commander" after a brief gun battle. Indian intelligence officers credited the bust in south Kashmir to the tracking of his mobile phone. Until a few years ago,...

SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - Suspected Islamist militants threw a grenade on Thursday at a crowded marketplace in Indian Kashmir, the second such attack in 24 hours, wounding 18 people, police said. "The grenade was aimed at a security vehicle, but missed the target and exploded in the busy market," a police official said. More than a dozen people were wounded on Wednesday in a similar attack on a Hindu gathering protesting the killing of 35 people in the troubled state's Doda region...

SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - Indian soldiers in Kashmir on Tuesday shot dead a suspected Muslim militant, who police said was behind bomb blasts in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi in March that killed 15 people and wounded dozens. "On specific information, Zubair was killed in a fierce encounter in Handwara," said Nitish Kumar, a police official, adding the man was considered to have played a leading role in the Varanasi attacks. Kumar said Zubair, who has one name, came from the north...

SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - Indian soldiers shot dead a senior Kashmiri militant on Sunday who the army said was a bomb-making expert responsible for a series of explosions across the strife-torn Himalayan region. Mushtaq Bhat, a district commander of Hizbul Mujahideen, Kashmir's frontline militant group, was killed in an ambush by troops in Tral town, an army spokesman said. Tral is to the south of Srinagar, the summer capital of the disputed region which is claimed by both India and...

SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) - Two civilians were killed and six people wounded in Indian Kashmir on Thursday when suspected Islamist militants hurled a grenade at a security patrol in a busy marketplace, police said. The attack in Chadoora town, 10 miles west of Srinagar, the main city of the disputed region, came a day after Kashmir's main separatist alliance and New Delhi agreed to work together to bring peace to the revolt-torn region. There has been a spurt in violence in the...

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Kashmiri separatists will try to revive a faltering peace process on Wednesday in talks overshadowed by this week's massacre of Hindus and rising violence in the disputed region. Singh's meeting with the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, an umbrella alliance of two dozen political separatist groups, is the second since he took power in 2004. But Hurriyat comes to New Delhi this time with more than a little skepticism: they...

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Kashmiri separatists will try to revive a faltering peace process on Wednesday in talks overshadowed by this week's massacre of Hindus and resurgent violence in the disputed region. Singh's meeting with the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, an umbrella alliance of two dozen political separatist groups, is the second since he took power in 2004. But Hurriyat comes to New Delhi this time with more than a little skepticism:...

JAMMU, India (Reuters) - India rushed hundreds of extra troops to hunt for Islamist militants in the remote mountains of Kashmir on Tuesday, after 35 Hindus were killed over two days in one of the worst massacres in the region in years. The troop deployment began as a general strike -- called to protest against the killings -- shut down the predominantly Hindu Jammu region of Indian Kashmir, where some half a million soldiers and policemen are deployed. Suspected Islamist militants...

By Ashok Pahalwan JAMMU, India (Reuters) - Suspected Islamic militants shot dead at least 35 Hindus in Indian-administered Kashmir ahead of crucial talks between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Kashmiri separatists, officials and police said on Monday. In one of the bloodiest massacres in recent months, militants struck two remote Hindu-dominated mountainous villages in Doda district, some 170 km (100 miles) northeast of Jammu, Kashmir's winter capital, early on Monday, and gunned...

JAMMU, India (Reuters) - Suspected Islamic militants shot dead at least 22 Hindus in a village in Indian-administered Kashmir on Monday, officials said. "We have a report of a massacre in which 22 people have been killed. The details are awaited," Vijay Bakaya, Kashmir's top bureaucrat, told Reuters. Police said all the dead were Hindus. Five people, among an unspecified number of wounded, were in critical condition, they said. The militants struck the remote village in Hindu-majority...