UPDATE - Kashmir landmine near school kills two children
Date: 06-Sep-01
Country: INDIA
Author: Sheikh Mushtaq
The children were playing on a river bank near the school in Baramulla district when the landmine, which police said had been planted by separatist guerrillas, exploded. The two children died instantly.
Baramulla district is 54 km (34 miles) north of Srinagar, the summer capital of revolt-racked Jammu and Kashmir.
Thirteen more people including four civilians died in overnight gunbattles between security forces and rebels across the Himalayan state.
Violence has escalated across the scenic Himalayan state after the leaders of India and Pakistan failed to make headway in a summit in July to tackle the decades-old row over the region.
An Indian army general said Pakistan had stepped up firing across the Kashmir frontier since the failed summit in the northern Indian town of Agra.
"They graduated from small arms weapons to heavy calibre and now they fire mortars," Lieutenant-General J.B.S. Yadava told reporters near Jammu, the winter capital of Jammu and Kashmir.
India and Pakistani troops frequently exchange firing along the 750-km (470-mile) that divides Kashmir between the two sides.
Yadava said his troops had orders to retaliate against any Pakistan firing which he said could be to cover guerrillas sneaking into India's side of Kashmir.
"If they fire a mortar, we will also fire a mortar. We have the right to defend ourselves against infiltration," he said.
India accuses Pakistan of training, financing and arming the Muslim rebels in the Himalayan region.
Islamabad denies direct involvement in the revolt, but says it offers moral and diplomatic support to the Kashmiri people in their struggle for self-determination.
More than 30,000 people have died since the revolt took off in Muslim-majority Kashmir in late 1989.
