SRINAGAR, 7 April 2005 — Two suspected gun-toting militants launched an attack yesterday against the biggest India-Pakistan peace gesture in decades, storming a guesthouse holding more than two dozen passengers of the first bus across divided Kashmir, sources said. They set on fire the heavily guarded complex but security forces said the passengers were safe.
Both attackers were killed and at least three people were injured, said Director-General of Police Gopal Sharma, the state’s police chief before the sprawling building was gutted by flames 100-feet high.
“All the bus passengers were safe,” he said.
Smoke poured from the windows of the guesthouse as people jumped from the ground floor assisted by soldiers. The heat was so intense that firefighters could not enter the building.
The raid was the biggest attack yet targeted at the bus service, set to be inaugurated today by Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. It will connect Srinagar and Muzaffarabad, the capitals of the Himalayan region divided for decades between India and Pakistan.
Officials in the Indian- and Pakistani-controlled sides of Kashmir condemned the attack and said the bus service would go ahead on schedule. Indian television quoted Manmohan as describing the raid, which comes ahead of a visit to New Delhi by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, as an “unfortunate development”.
“These are desperate responses by those who don’t want the dialogue to go ahead,” he told NDTV. “We will not allow them to derail the dialogue and the peace process.”
Pakistan expressed similar sentiments.
“We express grave sorrow at this very unfortunate incident,” Pakistan Foreign Minister Khursheed Mehmoud Kasuri told reporters in Islamabad.
“This particular thing is really unbelievable because they have committed no crime,” he said of the passengers. “All they wanted to do is to meet their loved ones from whom they have been separated.”
Four rebel groups who have threatened to disrupt the bus claimed responsibility for the attack. Samir Abdullah, spokesman for the groups, said the raid was carried out by Al-Nasireen, the Save Kashmir Movement, Al-Arifeen and Farzandan-e-Millat.
“I saw two gunmen with AK-47s running from one side of the building to another,” Aijaz Ahmed, a bank worker in the complex, said, after escaping through a window. The terrified man had blood on his shirt, though he was not hurt.
Heat from the blaze as the building collapsed could be felt several hundred meters away, driving back hundreds of soldiers, police and journalists. Hundreds of people worked in the complex, which housed the state’s tourism headquarters, a bank branch, an Indian Airlines office and railway and bus counters. Within little more than half-an-hour, the yellowed, two-story brick-and-timber building, made in the traditional Kashmiri steep-roofed style, was destroyed.
Security forces brought people out of the guesthouse, asking them to keep their hands raised as troops scoured the complex for the attackers. One of the injured was a woman shot on the street outside the building, collapsing before television cameras and then hobbling away with a wound in her back and her clothes soaked in blood. People screamed. A policeman shot in the arm cried “Please save me! Save me!” to colleagues as he lay on the ground outside the torched-building.
The street was blocked off as dozens of soldiers and police officers swarmed the area.
Authorities had taken at least 21 passengers into protective custody, worried they could be targeted by rebels. Ten of the passengers were summoned by police Sunday night from their homes in Srinagar, and taken to a government rest house where they remained Monday under heavy guard.
In Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistani Kashmir, passengers said the violence would not scare them off their first and possibly their only chance to see relatives separated by years of war and hostility between India and Pakistan. “I am not scared. I will definitely go if the bus goes,” said Nisar Ahmed Zakir. “In war-like situations such incidents happen. But I will go.”
Abida Masoodi, a woman, echoed his comments. “It’s my firm decision to go provided the bus goes. If such a death is the fate, then it’s OK.” Abida said she wanted to see sisters and brothers in Indian Kashmir she had not seen for 20 years. — Input from agencies.
