India Blames Pakistan For Massacre

After weeks of relative calm, India again turned its anger Sunday on rival neighbor Pakistan and Islamic militants, blaming them for the massacre of 27 Hindu civilians in a slum in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

"How long will we bear this?" Deputy Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani asked as he stood at the Qasimnagar slum on the outskirts of Jammu, winter capital of Jammu-Kashmir state — the site of the Saturday evening massacre.

At the base of the hill from which the heavily armed attackers emerged in the dark Saturday night, thousands of wailing slum residents on Sunday furiously raised their fists and shouted frenzied slogans against Pakistan, as well as their own federal and state governments, mobbing politicians who visited the site of the carnage.

It was the deadliest assault in disputed Kashmir province since a May 14 strike by Islamic militants against a military base near Jammu that killed 34 people — mostly soldiers' wives and children — an attack that put India on a war footing with neighboring Pakistan.

Those killed Saturday included 13 women and one child, Advani said.

Advani taunted Islamic guerrillas, whom the federal government blamed Sunday for the attack. The rebels have fought Indian security forces since 1989, in what the rebels and Pakistan call a "freedom struggle" to separate Muslim-majority Kashmir from India or merge it with Pakistan, a Muslim nation.

"Once again, the contention has been belied that violence in Jammu and Kashmir is the result of a freedom struggle," Advani said. "Women and children are not targeted in a freedom struggle."

Hours earlier, Advani had been asked by the top security panel in Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's Cabinet to travel to the massacre site, before the government formally responds to the attack.

"It is clear that all this is being carried out with the inspiration of Pakistan. It was a gruesome attack," Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha earlier told the private Aaj Tak television channel.

Advani, a known hardliner, will report his findings from his mission to Vajpayee and other key ministers.

— "On the basis of that, the government will present its viewpoint to the parliament (on Monday)," he told reporters before leaving for Jammu.

"The cabinet committee...strongly condemned the attack."

Pakistan's government also denounced the attack.

"The government of Pakistan condemns the killing of a number of civilians and injuries to many others in a terrorist attack in the outskirts of Jammu," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement Sunday. "The motivation behind the attack seems to be to enhance tension in the region."

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell is scheduled to visit the capitals of both countries this month for talks aimed at further easing tensions.

On Sunday, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw telephoned Sinha and "conveyed his deep sense of shock and outrage over the terrorist attack," an Indian Foreign Ministry statement said.

More than 1 million Indian and Pakistani soldiers have been massed along the frontier since a Dec. 13 attack on India's Parliament, which India blamed on Pakistan-backed rebels. Pakistan denied the charge.

There were fears earlier this year that tension between the two nuclear-armed neighbors could lead to war. But India backed off after persistent international diplomacy, and Pakistan promised to permanently end the infiltration of guerrillas across its border into Indian-controlled Kashmir.

For weeks, India had said the level of infiltration of militants was indeed coming down. But on Sunday, sharp words rang out again.

"Pakistan arms them, helps them and sends them. We believe it is Lashkar-e-Tayyaba that carried out yesterday's attack," junior interior minister I.D. Swamy said, referring to the most feared of more than a dozen Pakistan-based Islamic groups fighting in Kashmir.

"Elections are about to happen (in Jammu-Kashmir), and militants' groups are trying to create terror," Swamy said.

On Saturday, up to eight suspected Islamic militants, some of whom were dressed in the saffron robes of Hindu holy men, walked into the slum on the outskirts of Jammu and threw three or four grenades before opening fire with automatic weapons, witnesses told police. They escaped after trading gunfire with security forces.

Survivors said the attackers struck in the middle of a power blackout, throwing grenades and spraying the area with bullets.

"It was terrifying because we had never seen such a bloody thing happen in our lives," 38-year-old labourer Jagdish Lal told Reuters. "There was no light, that made it worse and we didn't know where these bullets were coming from. It was total chaos.

"Everybody was running helter-skelter for safety and I saw people falling on each other in the stampede, crying and wailing for help.

Witnesses said the men struck as many people listened to a broadcast on Saturday of an India-England cricket match in a mainly Hindu slum in Jammu, winter capital of Jammu and Kashmir state, killing 24 people on the spot.

Three others later died from their wounds, police said, bringing the death toll to 27. Another 10 remain critically injured, doctors at the Government Medical College Hospital in Jammu said.

No group has claimed responsibility for the incident, as is the trend in attacks in which many civilians are killed.

Violence has killed 60,000 people in the past decade in Jammu-Kashmir state, mostly in Kashmir Valley in the north. But in recent months suspected Islamic guerillas have increasingly targeted Jammu, in the south.

The territorial dispute over Kashmir is at the core of five decades of hostility between India and Pakistan, which have fought two wars over the territory. Both countries claim the territory in its entirety.

Pakistan denies giving material support to the militants, saying it provides them only moral and diplomatic support.