INDIA: India's army commander for the disputed Jammu and Kashmir state and another general were injured, while a brigadier was among eight soldiers killed yesterday in an attack by suspected Islamic guerrillas on an army garrison in the war-torn region.
Brig V.K. Govil died in the dawn attack by three suicide gunmen, dressed in Indian army uniforms, on the Tanda military base 25km west of the state's winter capital Jammu.
Lieut Gen Hari Prasad and Lieut Gen T P S Brar were injured after a grenade was detonated under their vehicle by one of the gunmen who was later shot dead by the army.
The state's most senior army officers were visiting the garrison where the Islamic rebels had staged an attack engaging soldiers in a firefight for three hours.
The strike on the military base came hours after seven Hindu pilgrims were killed and 42 others injured, several seriously, in a bomb attack by suspected Muslim militants fighting Kashmir's 14-year civil war for an independent homeland.
Monday night's attack was on a crowd of Hindu devotes as they queued for food in a community kitchen at a pilgrim staging point in Katra near Jammu before making their way to the Vaishnodevi shrine in southern Kashmir.
High up in the mountains, the shrine dedicated to the Hindu god Lord Shiva, is visited by thousands of Hindus every year around this time. Meanwhile, departing from its usual response to such attacks, Indian leaders did not automatically blame Pakistan.
Somewhat ambiguously they blamed "elements" that were out to sabotage peace efforts between the two nuclear neighbours.
India holds Pakistan, which holds a third of Kashmir and claims the rest, responsible for fuelling the Muslim insurgency raging there, an allegation Pakistan denies.
Bilateral relations between the neighbours who have fought three wars since independence in 1947, two of them over Kashmir, have thawed after India's prime minister Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee extended a "hand of friendship " to Islamabad in April.