Kashmir Attacks Hurt More Than 50

Guerrillas lobbed grenades at a Kashmir bus stand and a marketplace bustling with Muslims assembling for Friday prayers, leaving 52 injured in the worst attack on civilians since the bombing of the state assembly building last year.

Police and state officials in Indian-controlled Kashmir blamed Islamic militants fighting Indian soldiers since 1989 for independence or a merger with India's nuclear rival, Pakistan.

The assailants threw four or five grenades into a busy market at midmorning, wounding 35 civilians in Shopiyan, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu-Kashmir state, said an officer at the state police control room.

"There were no security forces present. We were going about our daily market routine," said Mohammed Shaban, 55, one of the wounded, who was hospitalized in Srinagar.

The civilian casualties in Friday's attacks were the highest since the Oct. 1 bombing of the Jammu-Kashmir State Assembly building in Srinagar, in which 38 people were killed and some 60 wounded, mostly civilians. In December, 41 people were wounded when grenades thrown at Indian soldiers exploded on civilians.

Civilians have often been caught in the cross fire of the insurgency that has claimed at least 32,000 lives.

The explosions took place in the heart of the prosperous fruit-trading town as hundreds of devout Muslims assembled an hour before Friday prayers at the town's nearby mosque.

"It could have been a greater disaster had the grenades exploded an hour later," said Naseema Bano, the administrator of Pulwama district, where Shopiyan is located. She said it was not yet known whether any of the rebel groups operating in Kashmir had carried out the attack.

About five hours later, at least two grenades exploded at a busy bus stand in Anantnag, about 55 kilometers (35 miles) south of Srinagar, wounding 17 people. They were all civilians except for two paramilitary troopers from the Central Reserve Police Force, said the police control room officer, who spoke on customary condition of anonymity.

No one claimed responsibility for any of the attacks.

Five rebels were killed in separate gunbattles, officials said.

In the Zainpora village in Pulwama district, two militants hiding in a house fired at army soldiers who surrounded the village, Bano said. The soldiers fired back and both rebels were killed, she said.

In another 14-hour gunbattle south of Srinagar, one militant holed up in a house was killed while an accomplice escaped, said Border Security Force spokesman Tirath Acharya.

Paramilitary police also attacked a hide-out of suspected Islamic guerrillas in the woods of Badipathri in Kangan, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) northeast of Srinagar. They killed two guerillas while a third escaped, said Col. G.S. Mann, commander of the paramilitary forces in Kangan.