INDIA: A remote-controlled bomb on the roadside in northern India's war-torn Jammu and Kashmir province blew up an army patrol car at dawn yesterday, killing 10 people writes Rahul Bedi in New Delhi.
The victims were an army major, eight soldiers, a police officer and the civilian driver.
Officials in Kashmir's summer capital Srinagar said the powerful blast in nearby Wachi village hurled the sports utility vehicle into the sky, leaving a three-metre crater in the road and strewing body parts of the passengers all around.
A man claiming to be a spokesman for the Hizbul Mujahideen insurgent group - the largest one operating in Kashmir for the 15 years that the insurgency has raged in the state - claimed responsibility for the blast in a call to Central News Service, a local news agency.
India blames neighbouring nuclear rival Pakistan for fuelling Kashmir's insurgency for an independent Muslim homeland, a claim that Islamabad denies.