Bomb wrapped as gift kills 3 in Kashmir

Jammu and Kashmir Police (JKP) patrol near a burning tyre in Srinagar Friday during protests for a mother and daughter who were killed in a grenade explosion at a crowded market place Thursday in restive Kashmir's summer capital. Residents allege that the security forces tossed a grenade killing the mother and daughter and wounding nearly sixty people including 27 school children, but the officials blamed the bloody incident on militants. PHOTO: AFP

The explosion occurred in the house of Mohammed Sayeed, 45, late Thursday in the southern Kashmir town of Bijbehara, a police spokesman said.

"Sayeed and his two children died on the spot while his wife was seriously injured," the spokesman said. The son was aged 20 while the daughter was 22.

Police said they were mystified why the family was targeted as they had no political affiliations.

An unidentified person delivered the wrapped gift earlier in the day and when the family "started opening it there was an explosion," the police spokesman said.

The fresh violence came after a mother and daughter died and 50 people were injured, many of them school children, Thursday, in an Islamic rebel grenade attack in the Himalayan state's summer capital Srinagar.

The rebels hurled a grenade at a security vehicle but missed, and the device exploded outside the gates of a missionary school.

It was the second rebel attack in two days in Srinagar, urban hub of a 15-year revolt against New Delhi's rule. On Wednesday, two people died and 34 were injured when militants detonated a car bomb in a commercial district.

The two explosions in Srinagar also came after the state capital shifted its operations here from Jammu, the winter capital, on Monday.

There has been an upsurge in violence since India and Pakistan last month resumed a bus service between their zones of Kashmir meant to promote peace in the divided region and reunite friends and relatives who have not seen each other for decades.

The bus is seen by many as the most important achievement of a peace process between the nuclear-armed neighbours that formally began early last year aimed at ending their dispute over Kashmir, trigger of two of their three wars.

On Friday, more than 1,000 students from army-owned schools chanting "we want peace" and "end the violence" protested in front of Srinagar's small UN military observer's office, witnesses said.

The observers are here to monitor any ceasefire violations along the de facto border dividing the Indian and Pakistani armies.