SRINAGAR, 14 August 2003 — Eleven people were killed and 50 injured in an escalation of violence ahead of India’s Independence Day, police said yesterday. Two persons were killed in two blasts while nine people died in separate incidents of violence. At least 44 people were wounded in a powerful explosion near a restaurant and a bank in the town of Bandipora, 60 kilometers north of Srinagar.

“Preliminary investigations suggest that militants triggered an improvised explosive device (IED) attached to a bicycle or scooter near the restaurant,” a police spokesman said, adding bomb experts were collecting samples at the scene. Police said the impact of the blast smashed windowpanes in the area and was felt up to two kilometers away.

The injured included five border guards, two policemen and four women, the spokesman said, adding six seriously injured people were rushed to Srinagar’s main hospital, where one of the injured died.

A lesser-known group Al-Mansoorain claimed responsibility for Bandipora explosion, the group’s spokesman Abu Shakir told a local news agency, Current News Service.

He claimed five Indian border guards and two army soldiers were either killed or seriously injured in the explosion. Shakir said his group would continue such attacks in the coming few days “with a view to disrupting India’s Independence Day celebrations.”

In a separate incident, eight civilians were injured yesterday in the Qaimoh area of Kulgam township, 70 kilometers south of Srinagar when militants hurled a grenade at a Border Security Force (BSF) patrol. It missed its target and exploded among passersby, police said. One of the injured later died on way to hospital.

Meanwhile, suspected militants hurled a hand grenade at the house of lawmaker Ghulam Hassan Khan in the southern town of Shopian, which hit the target but did not explode, police said. It was later defused by bomb experts.

Another IED explosion occurred on the lawns of a government department building in northern Baramulla town yesterday, police said, adding that there were no casualties. Police reported two more explosions in north Kashmir.

Indian troops also shot dead two militants in the northern district of Kupwara overnight, a police spokesman said. Two more militants were shot dead by Indian troops in two encounters yesterday in southern Pulwama and Anantnag districts, police said. A civilian who strayed into the crossfire was also killed during one of the gun battles.

Police said suspected militants shot dead three people in the southern Kashmir districts of Poonch and Udhampur overnight and yesterday.

Meanwhile, Kashmiri separatists slammed India’s dismissal of a Pakistani cease-fire proposal in the disputed state, saying yesterday the spiking of guns could create a “congenial atmosphere” for talks.

“We have been saddened by India’s negative response to the Pakistani cease-fire offer,” Moulvi Abbas Ansari, the head of region’s main separatist alliance the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, told AFP.

“There is still time for India to reconsider a cease-fire along the LOC as the development can create a congenial atmosphere for talks,” he said, referring to the cease-fire line splitting Kashmir known as the Line of Control.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said Tuesday Islamabad could “facilitate” a cease-fire in insurgency-wracked Kashmir, but that this was up to India.

“If India stops atrocities, human rights violations, releases political prisoners and creates an atmosphere, then maybe we can facilitate a cease-fire (in Indian-ruled Kashmir),” Musharraf told Indian lawmakers, journalists and ex-diplomats in Islamabad. The daily skirmishes between Indian and Pakistani soldiers along the cease-fire line splitting Kashmir could be halted immediately, he added.

“A cease-fire can be achieved on the Line of Control, even today, if both sides agree,” he said, according to a senior Pakistani official. India dismissed Musharraf’s cease-fire suggestions as propaganda, and urged Islamabad to end what New Delhi claims is its support for militants engaged in an uprising against Indian rule in the divided Himalayan state.