Kashmir rocked by second bomb blast in a day

Three killed in market of Indian-controlled city

February 12, 2000
Web posted at: 1:20 a.m. HKT (1720 GMT)

From CNN's Kasra Naji

NEW DELHI (CNN) -- A bomb exploded on Friday in a vegetable market in the center of Jammu, the winter capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir, killing three people and injuring 15, police said.

The blast was the second bomb explosion in the region in less than 24 hours. On Thursday evening, a bomb went off in a train 50 kilometers (30 miles) outside the city, killing five and injuring another five.

Police blamed Islamic separatist guerrillas for Friday's bomb, which went off without warning in a busy market in the city center. No one has claimed responsibility.

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India-Pakistan relations

Angry shoppers in the predominantly Hindu city pelted the police with stones afterward for not doing enough to prevent the violence.

The troubled Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir has been the scene of an increasingly vicious guerrilla war with Islamic Pakistani militants fighting Indian forces for a separate homeland or merger with Pakistan.

India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars over the Himalayan region. The two nuclear neighbors came very near a fourth war last year when Islamic militants crossed the Line of Control between Indian- and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir, launching attacks against Indian troops.

That conflict ended when the militants withdrew into Pakistan.

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CIA World Factbook: India
Jammu & Kashmir
Jammu and Kashmir Government, India

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