A car-bomb aimed at an army convoy killed at least seven people and wounded 37 at a fruit market in Kashmir, where a surge in violence is threatening peace moves between India and Pakistan.
The Pro-Pakistan Hizbul Mujahideen group claimed responsibility for the blast.
Police said a senior army officer and five soldiers were among the wounded in the explosion in Kashmir's main city, Srinagar.
They said an army convoy, which was passing through the highway near the market, was the target of the blast.
A Hizbul Mujahideen spokesman called newspaper offices in Srinagar and said the group also set off explosions in the Pulwama and Doda areas of south Kashmir.
"We inflicted heavy casualties on the Indian security forces," the spokesman said.
Elsewhere in Kashmir, 12 people including five rebels and two soldiers were killed in separate shootouts across the region in the past week.
The escalating violence follows last month's car-bombings in India's financial centre of Bombay that killed 52 people.
Militants have stepped up attacks across the Himalayan region since Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's visit to the valley on August 28th. At least 92 people have been killed in rebel violence across the strife-torn region since then.