SRINAGAR, 24 May 2004 — At least 29 people were killed in disputed Kashmir yesterday when a bus packed with Indian soldiers and their families ran over a home-made land mine planted by separatist guerrillas.
The attack was the deadliest in Kashmir since India and Pakistan began a peace process late last year to resolve the dispute over the territory.
Torn limbs, blood-stained shoes and clothes and lunch-boxes with rice and bread lay strewn on the highway near Gulabbagh, 80 km from here in south Kashmir’s Anantnag district.
The bus — part of a convoy going from Srinagar to Jammu, the state’s winter capital — was left a twisted mass of metal near a giant crater on the highway carved through Himalayan foothills.
Soldiers and sniffer dogs combed the area for more mines. A senior police officer, K. Srinivasan, said 19 Border Security Force troopers, three children and six women were killed in the blast.
A leading Pakistan-based rebel group, Hizbul Mujahedeen, claimed responsibility for the blast.
