Indian newspapers said today a guerrilla raid in Kashmir that killed 34 had derailed a peace mission to South Asia by US envoy Ms Christina Rocca.
US Assistant Secretary of State Ms Rocca is due to leave India for Pakistan later today on the second leg of a mission to ease tension between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
"Rocca mission fails, Delhi tells her to rein in Islamabad first," read a headline in the Asian Age. "India to Rocca: It's Pakistan which needs restraining," said the Indian Express. Yesterday's raid was the deadliest in eight months in the Himalayan region at the core of a military standoff between India and Pakistan in which about a million men are massed on both sides of the border.
Authorities said the three guerrillas who attacked a bus and went on a shooting rampage in an army camp 10 miles south of Jammu, winter capital of India's Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir state, were from a main Pakistan-based militant group.
"All of them are Pakistanis," an official said. "Our investigations have revealed they belonged to the Al Mansoorian outfit, an offshoot of Lashkar-e-Taiba." The Lashkar-e-Taiba has committed several suicide attacks on Indian army bases.
No group has claimed responsibility for the raid.
The dead included 11 children, 11 women, five soldiers, four civilians and the three attackers, gunned down four hours after the raid began. Forty people were in hospital, eight of them "critical"