Bomb Blast in Kashmir Leaves 11 Dead, 16 Wounded

JAMMU, India —  An explosive device went off Friday during Shiite Muslim religious services in troubled Kashmir, killing at least 11 people and wounding 16, police said.

Nearly 500 people were gathered in a tent listening to religious sermons when the explosion occurred in a village about 15 miles north of Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir state.

The wounded included a former state minister, Maulvi Iftikhar Hussain Ansari, who is also a religious leader. Ansari received minor head injuries, police said.

Police in Srinagar said an improvised explosive device hidden near the dais was triggered by remote control. Ansari appeared to be the target, as the blast occurred while he was addressing the congregation.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack. Police couldn’t say whether a rival Sunni sect or an Islamic militant group set off the explosion, but the separatist Hizbul Moujahedeen group was suspected in the blast.

The group, fighting for Kashmir’s merger with neighboring Pakistan, killed the state’s junior power minister, Ghulam Hassan Bhatt, and four others last month in a land mine explosion in southern Kashmir.

Friday’s explosion created tension between the Shiite and Sunni communities as more than 15,000 protesting Shiites marched up to Srinagar. They later dispersed after hearing that Ansari was only slightly wounded.

Police rushed reinforcements to Shiite-dominated towns and villages in Kashmir and imposed a curfew.

Separatist violence has surged in Kashmir since the onset of summer. According to officials, 916 people, including 139 Indian security personnel and 477 separatist militants, have been killed since January.

Nearly a dozen militant groups are fighting New Delhi’s rule in Jammu and Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state, where police and hospitals say more than 30,000 people have been killed since 1989 in the separatist rebellion.

India accuses Pakistan of training and arming the militants, a charge denied by the government in Islamabad.