Eight killed on Kashmir pilgrim route

SRINAGAR, India -- Eight people have been killed and fifteen wounded in Kashmir in two explosions on a route where thousands of Hindu pilgrims were trekking to a holy cave-shrine.

Two of the dead were policemen, another two are believed to have been pilgrims.

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Two of the injured were in a critical condition, the official said in Jammu, the winter capital of Jammu and Kashmir state.

Saturday's party of pilgrims leaving for the cave-shrine have been stopped at Jammu following the blast.

Hundreds of Indian soldiers are patrolling a 46 km (29 mile) trek in the Pahalagam area 97 km southeast of Srinagar, where an annual Hindu pilgrimage started early this month.

"Three pilgrims also received minor injuries ... (and) were given first aid," the police official added.

On a single day last August nearly 100 people -- including 22 pilgrims at the base camp which leads to the Amarnath shrine -- were slaughtered across Jammu and Kashmir by unidentified militants.

No militant group claimed responsibility for the landmine attack, the latest in a rash of violence which has spread across the Muslim-majority state ruled by India.

An official spokesman said nearly 200 people, most of them rebels, had been killed in the first 15 days of July.

Nearly a dozen militant groups are fighting Indian rule in Jammu and Kashmir. New Delhi accuses Islamabad of giving military backing to the separatists but Pakistan says it provides only moral and diplomatic support.

Pakistan's military ruler General Pervez Musharraf, who had just returned from a summit with Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, said on Friday there could be no peace with India without a solution to Kashmir.

India's External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh responded by reiterating New Delhi's claim to the region and criticising Islamabad for sponsoring a rebellion.

The two countries have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir where more than 30,000 people have been killed in violence since the rebellion erupted in 1989.

Reuters contributed to this report.