Thousands Evacuated After Fire In Kashmir

A fire that broke out at the Indian army's largest arms depot in Kashmir killed two firefighters and wounded at least 35 people, officials said Sunday as the blaze continued to rage.

Defense Ministry spokesman Lt. A.K. Mathur said two military firefighters died of their wounds sustained trying to douse the inferno, which sent shells exploding into the air and a massive plume of black smoke that blanketed the Himalayan region.

Some 27,000 people from villages within a three-mile radius were evacuated from the area around the Khandroo depot, some 43 miles south of Srinagar, the main city in India's Jammu-Kashmir state, said local police chief Abdul Ghani Mir.

Mathur said he did not know what caused the fire, but ruled out sabotage or an attack by Kashmiri militants.

However, Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen, a local militant group, reportedly claimed responsibility for the fire in a message faxed to the Press Trust of India news agency. The statement, signed by group spokesman Jamil Ahmad, said two rockets were fired into the munitions depot, PTI said.

At least 35 soldiers and civilians were wounded, 15 of them seriously, officials said.

The Indian military has a massive presence in Kashmir, where militant groups are fighting for independence from Hindu-majority India, or a merger with Muslim Pakistan. Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan and claimed by both in its entirety.

India has an estimated 700,000 soldiers in Kashmir, fighting nearly a dozen rebel groups since 1989. More than 68,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in the conflict.