SRINAGAR, 2 September 2003 — Sixteen people were killed in Indian-administered Kashmir yesterday in a wave of violence which police said was in revenge for the killing by Indian troops two days earlier of a top Kashmiri commander.

A bomb disposal expert was killed and three people were injured while trying to defuse an explosive near a key road tunnel in south Kashmir, police said.

The bomb was placed inside a bag near the Jawahar tunnel – the 2.5-kilometer link between the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley and the neighboring Hindu-dominated Jammu region, they said.

Three disposal experts were trying to defuse the bomb but it exploded killing one and injuring the other two, police told AFP. A paramilitary trooper standing nearby was also injured.

They said the entire area was sealed off to search for the militants suspected to have planted the bomb, with traffic held up on both sides of the tunnel.

The road through the tunnel is the only land route to insurgency-wracked northern Kashmir from India proper and is used regularly to transport troops and military supplies.

The mountain tunnel and the road itself have been repeatedly targeted since the separatist uprising against Indian rule broke out in Kashmir in 1989.

The 14-year insurgency has claimed more than 38,000 lives, according to Indian officials. Separatists put the toll between 80,000 and 100,000.

In another incident, suspected militants triggered a land mine explosion in the village of Kedar, near Shopian, 50 kilometers south of Kashmiri summer capital Srinagar yesterday. Police said there were no casualties. Indian troops had defused two more land mines in north Kashmir, they said.

In a separate development, five people were killed in fighting overnight in a fierce encounter between militants and Indian Army in the northern Moonabal jungles in Kupwara district, police said.

They said two soldiers, two civilians and one militant were among those killed in a six-hour battle.

In the village of Dardpora in Baramulla district, Sikh civilian Harpal Singh and an Indian soldier were killed and two other civilians were injured during an exchange of fire between Indian troops and militants yesterday.

Four civilians, including a father and his two sons, were shot dead by suspected militants overnight and yesterday in southern Udhampur district, police said. No rebel group has taken responsibility for the killings.

A civilian and a militant were also killed in two separate shootouts in Kupwara overnight, police said.

In the district of Doda, a civilian was killed and another injured in an overnight land mine blast, police said, adding a policeman was killed by militants in the district of Kathua further south.

The fresh fighting rocked Kashmir two days after Indian security officials claimed to have killed the region’s “most wanted” militant, Gazi Baba, during a 10-hour clash in Srinagar.

“The fresh violence is the manifestation of anger by militants over Gazi Baba’s death,” a police officer told AFP.

Baba headed the hard-line Jaish-e-Mohammed group in Indian Kashmir and was accused by India of masterminding an attack on its national Parliament in December 2001 that killed 15 people, including five attackers.

Jaish has denied Baba was killed in the Srinagar encounter but the region’s police chief Gopal Sharma said there was no doubt the militant commander is dead.

“There is absolutely no doubt that the slain militant is Gazi Baba,” Sharma told reporters in Srinagar.

“We have confirmed from our sources that the militant killed is definitely Baba. There is no room for any doubt. We have checked from various sources,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Indian Army yesterday claimed to have recovered a cache of arms and ammunition close to Line of Control (LOC) — the de facto border that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan, an army officer told visiting reporters in frontier northwestern sector of Nowgam.