17 killed in Kashmir market blast

SRINAGAR, India, Jan 3: A powerful bomb blast ripped through a crowded market in the Kashmiri summer capital Srinagar today, killing 14 civilians and three Indian security personnel, officials said, reports AFP.

Another 20 people were injured in the explosion in the city's Batmaloo district, just two km from the downtown area.

Several security personnel were at the market buying vegetables when the bomb went off. The injured included a dozen members of the paramilitary Border Security Force (BSF) and Special Security Branch (SSB).

At the blast site, a truck and a van belonging to each outfit were destroyed. The SSB is a new unit meant to guard top politicians in Kashmir. The BSF mans the country's land border with Pakistan

The blast sparked panic in the morning crowd at the market, witnesses said.

The area was immediately cordoned off by security forces, as vendors helped to put the battered bodies on a truck to be taken to a hospital.

"People were wailing, some could not run because they were wounded," a labourer at the site told AFP.

No one claimed responsibility, but the police blamed Muslim militants fighting to end Indian rule in Kashmir for the blast.

The vegetable market straddles a highway and lies sandwiched between an army and BSF camp.

Elsewhere, Muslim militants threw rocks at an army camp in Kashmir's Jammu region overnight Sunday, then shot dead one of the soldiers who emerged.

More than 25,000 people have died in violence related to a Muslim separatist drive raging since 1989 in the Himalayan Indian state of Kashmir.

India accuses Pakistan of arming and training the militants. Islamabad denies the charge, but gives open diplomatic support to the unrest. Both India and Pakistan dispute Kashmir's ownership.