Separatists fire 16 rockets in Indian Kashmir

September 25, 2000
Web posted at: 7:42 PM HKT (1142 GMT)

JAMMU, India (Reuters) -- Separatist guerrillas fired 16 rockets at a border town in the strife-torn north Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, plunging the area into chaos, police said on Monday.

Officials said the attack, which occurred on Sunday evening, saw nine rockets fired by the militants land near a defense installation in Rajouri town, 176 km (110 miles) north of Jammu, the state's winter capital.

They added there was a lull in firing for about half an hour before the militants again pounded the area with more rockets.

There was no information on whether there were any casualties. Police said damage had yet to be fully assessed but the attack plunged the town into darkness, traffic came to a grinding halt, windows were smashed and people ran for shelter.

"Obviously, there must be some amount of damage to property and the details are expected any time today," a police official said.

Witnesses said they believed the rockets were fired from the other side of the Line of Control which divides the Indian and Pakistani controlled areas of the bitterly disputed Himalayan region.

Nearly a dozen militant groups are fighting New Delhi's rule in Jammu and Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state where police and hospitals say more than 30,000 people have been killed in separatist violence since 1990.

India, which controls 45 percent of Kashmir, accuses Pakistan of arming and training Kashmiri separatists, a charge Islamabad denies. Pakistan rules over a third of Kashmir and China the rest.

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