NEW DELHI, 7 August — Nine Hindus were killed and 31 wounded by gunmen in Indian Kashmir yesterday. The killings worsened India-Pakistan relations as New Delhi promptly blamed Al Mansoor, a Pakistan-based group, for the attack.
The attack near Pahalgam, the base camp for those making a grueling 50-km (30-mile) trek to a cave shrine high in the Himalayas, was the bloodiest in Jammu and Kashmir since 28 Hindu slum-dwellers were killed last month.
At dawn, three or four armed men ran out from a dense forest and struck while their slept in the open. The men hurled grenades to divert attention before opening fire with automatic weapons, security officials said.
The Pakistani government and an alliance of Kashmiri separatist groups condemned the attack. Pakistan also rejected “with contempt” Indian accusations that it was behind the massacre.
India later listed a series of steps it said it expected Pakistan to take against Kashmiri separatists, including ordering fighters inside Indian Kashmir to stop violence, before the neighbors could resume talks.
A senior Indian foreign ministry official said Islamabad had to not just stop cross-border infiltration of fighters into Kashmir, it had to stop wireless communication between separatist groups on either side of the border, as well as order fighters who have already entered Indian Kashmir to stop their activities.
