SRINAGAR, India, 23 September 2004 — The chief minister of Indian Kashmir escaped a bid on his life yesterday when separatist rebels fired grenades at a government building where he was filing his papers to contest a by-election, police said.
The attack came two days before Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is due to meet Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in New York to push forward a fragile peace process that seems to be getting stuck over the thorny Kashmir dispute.
Mufti Mohammad Sayeed was unhurt after the incident, police said, the second attempt on his life this year by separatists fighting Indian rule in the region.
Five people were wounded after unidentified men fired three grenades from a rifle at the heavily-guarded district administrator’s office in Anantnag town, about 55 kilometers south of Srinagar, summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir state, they said.
“There were three simultaneous explosions and people ran for cover,” Manzoor Ahmed, a driver who was wounded in the incident, told a Reuters photographer from his hospital bed in Anantnag I was bleeding and crying for help. Security forces in a nearby bunker were firing in retaliation,” he said. The explosions occurred minutes after Sayeed entered the building, a police officer in Anantnag said by phone. “The chief minister filed his papers and was escorted out safely,” he said.
Jamiatul Mujahideen, a Kashmiri group, called newspaper offices in Srinagar and claimed responsibility for the attack. The same group said it tried to kill Sayeed in February by firing grenades at a public meeting he was attending. Sayeed became chief minister in 2002, promising a healing touch to the troubled region where tens of thousands of people have been killed since an uprising against Indian rule began in 1989.
He is a member of the upper house of Jammu and Kashmir’s legislature and is contesting elections to the lower house, to be held on Oct. 13. Violence has continued in Kashmir despite a sluggish peace process between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.
Security agencies say militants try to launch a major strike to draw attention to their campaign every time leaders of India and Pakistan are due to hold talks or global leaders visit South Asia. India accuses Pakistan of abetting the insurgency. Pakistan says it only gives moral support to what it calls freedom fighters.
