Islamic guerrillas kill 25 Hindus in grenade attack

JAMMU, India -- Suspected Islamic guerrillas threw grenades and engaged security forces in a gun battle Saturday, killing 25 Hindus -- mostly women and children -- in a shantytown outside the winter capital of Jammu-Kashmir state, police and hospital officials said.

More than 30 people were wounded, according to officials at the Government Medical College Hospital in Jammu.

State police chief Ashok Suri said authorities suspect the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, the most feared of more than dozen Pakistan-based Islamic groups fighting to secure Kashmir's independence from India or merge with mostly Muslim Pakistan. He did not elaborate.

No group has claimed responsibility for the incident.

Up to eight militants walked into the shantytown outside Jammu and set off three or four grenades before opening fire, the police control officer said, citing witness accounts. The victims were watching a final cricket match between India and England on television, he said.

The Indian government did not immediately react to news of the assault. But it was almost certain to raise tensions with Pakistan, which is blamed by New Delhi for most of the terrorist activity in India. Pakistan denies involvement.

Jammu, located in the southern part of Jammu-Kashmir, has rarely witnessed the kind of violence that has killed more than 60,000 people in the state over the past decade, mostly in the Kashmir Valley father to the north.

But Islamic groups have increasingly made the Jammu region the focus of their attacks in recent months.

India says Pakistan is fighting a "proxy war," providing arms, funds and training to the militants. Islamabad says it backs the rebels only with ideology, not weapons.

The territorial dispute over Kashmir is at the core of five decades of hostility between India and Pakistan, which have fought two wars over the territory.

More than 1 million Indian and Pakistani soldiers are massed along their frontier. There were fears earlier this year that tension between the two nuclear-armed neighbors could lead to war.