SRINAGAR, India, 2 May 2006 — Suspected militants woke up 22 Hindu villagers from slumber, lined them up and shot them execution style in Kashmir’s Kalhan village on Sunday night. Bodies of 13 kidnapped Hindu shepherds were also found elsewhere in the violence-wracked Himalayan state ahead of peace talks between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and a faction of the separatists.
The raid on the village was the bloodiest by suspected militants in Indian-administered Kashmir since a 2003 cease-fire between India and Pakistan.
The slayings came days before Kashmir’s political separatists are to meet with Manmohan, who suggested the killings would not hamper efforts to find peace in the region, divided between India and Pakistan.
“People of Kashmir have rejected and rebuffed terrorists repeatedly,” he said.
India has repeatedly accused Pakistan of backing the militants, even as the two rivals have talked peace. Manmohan, however, stopped short of blaming Islamabad for the attacks. The more than half-dozen assailants, some of them in army uniforms, slipped into the village at night and coaxed wary villagers from their homes by using local guides, who told people the soldiers had come to meet residents.
“When we assembled outside the home of the village head... they showered bullets on us,” said Gyan Chand, one of five people wounded in the attack. He spoke from a hospital in the town of Doda, about 170 km northeast of Jammu, the winter capital of India’s Jammu and Kashmir state.
Most of the injured were flown by military helicopters to the Government Medical College in Jammu, where most were still in shock.
“The gunmen started beating us. When I tried to prevent my husband getting killed, they opened fire killing many people on the spot,” said 37-year-old Gilu Devi, tears rolling down her cheeks as she recalled her futile effort to save her husband. Devi and her eight-year-old daughter were being treated in the hospital.
Others with bullet wounds were too shocked to speak, while some complained of inadequate security in the region.
The 13 shepherds were abducted over the weekend in Kashmir’s Udhampur district. Four were found dead Sunday, and the bodies of the nine others were discovered yesterday afternoon, said a senior police officer, Rajesh Singh. The kidnap slaying of the shepherds was also blamed on the militants.
A leader of Kashmir’s political separatist movement, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, called the attack in Lalhan “a deplorable and heinous act.” His group, the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, is to take part in a previously planned meeting later this week with the prime minister.
“I hope we are able to find a way out of this mindless death and destruction,” the Mirwaiz said.
The state’s deputy chief minister, Muzaffar Hussain Beig, said the “terrorists” were “bent on marring the fragile peace and security in the region. But the peace process is irreversible and cannot be sabotaged.”
The largest militant group, Hezbul Mujahedeen, claimed in a statement sent to Kashmir’s Current News Service that Indian intelligence agents carried out the killings as an “attempt to defame the” insurgents.
Several militant groups have been fighting for Kashmir’s independence or its merger with Pakistan since 1989. India says most of the groups are based in Pakistan and receive material and training from Islamabad — allegations denied by Pakistan.
— Additional input from agencies
