Attack on Kashmir army camp: 7 troops killed

An unidentified Indian woman injured in a bomb blast lies on a hospital bed, near her relatives, in Katra on Tuesday. At least seven Hindu devotees were killed and 36 others seriously injured in a bomb blast near Mata Vaishnodevi temple shrine in Indian Kashmir. Photo: AFP

This came barely twelve hours after the grenade attacks on Vaishno Devi pilgrims at Banganga near Katra in which seven devotees were killed.

The terrorists, in army uniforms, alighted from a vehicle around 5.30 am and began firing on security guards at the 610 EME camp at Tanda, Jammu defence spokesman, Col B Rathore told PTI.

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The terrorists barged into the camp and after lobbying grenades opened indiscriminate firing.

The jawans were killed in the suicide attack, lasting 15 minutes, and of the dead two were on guard duty at the gate of the camp.

Rathore said two terrorists were killed in the subsequent encounter.

The number of terrorists involved in the attack on the camp was still to be ascertained, Lt Col RK Sen, a defence spokesperson, said.

Mopping up operations were continuing in the area.

Seven pilgrims were killed and 48 others injured on Monday night in the attack by terrorists in Balganga.

"It is very unfortunate that the process of peace has suffered a setback," Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed said reacting to the attack on the Army camp.

AFP adds: India on Tuesday reacted angrily to an upsurge in violence that left 16 people killed in troubled Kashmir and said the attacks were aimed at derailing a fledgling peace process with rival Pakistan.

The Indian parliament briefly set aside the day's debates and condemned the overnight grenade attacks on Hindu devotees that left seven dead, and the suicide raid by militants on an army camp earlier Tuesday in troubled Kashmir.

"The house strongly deplores this barbaric and inhuman act by the militants. It is an attempt to disturb the normalcy in the (Kashmir) state," parliament's lower house said in a resolution.

Seven soldiers died and six were wounded when militants at Tuesday dawn attacked Tanda military base in southern Kashmir. Two of the militants were also killed.

India's Deputy Home Minister Lal Krishna Advani reacted sharply, saying that the latest killings was not just an act of cross-border militant attacks in Indian Kashmir.

"Normally we consider these terrorist strikes as part of the continuing proxy-war but these incidents are an attempt to disturb the normalcy in Jammu and Kashmir," Advani told parliament.