- SRINAGAR, India (Reuters)
- Suspected Islamic militants renewed a bloody assault in Indian Kashmir
on Wednesday as India pressed ahead with controversial state elections
which have triggered a bout of anti-poll violence.
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- After a third phase of voting on Tuesday -- in which
18 people died in the bloodiest polling day since elections started --
another 13 died on Wednesday in separate attacks by suspected militant
separatists.
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- India sees the vote as a means of enhancing the legitimacy
of its rule in its only-Muslim majority state and a test of Pakistan's
willingness to stop Islamic militants crossing into Indian Kashmir to join
the separatist revolt.
-
- It says this infiltration has increased during the elections,
fueling the violence. A further six alleged infiltrators were shot dead
by Indian troops on the border on Wednesday, a defense official said.
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- Pakistan, which came to the brink of a fourth war in
June with India over disputed Kashmir, says the elections are a farce,
but denies sponsoring the militants.
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- For many ordinary Kashmiris caught between the two nuclear-armed
rivals, the elections were just another cause for violence and fear in
a state already exhausted by 13 years of separatist militancy in which
at least 35,000 people have died.
-
- "We are being ignored in all this, marginalized
as if we don't matter," said one Kashmiri university professor.
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- "This is a futile exercise. India is hoodwinking
the world community by these tactics. We want freedom. Give us our freedom,"
said Farhan Rashid, a florist in the Kashmiri capital Srinagar, where election
weariness was at its highest.
-
- "This election is the least of our concerns,"
said Gulam Mohammed, a carpet seller.
-
- Voter turnout has been above 40 percent in all three
rounds, according to the independent election commission.
-
- But this has been helped by high turnout in predominantly
Hindu areas in the Jammu region to the south which oppose any move to break
away from secular but mostly Hindu India.
-
- In the lush Kashmir Valley, now the heartland of separatism,
many responded to a call by moderate separatist groups to boycott the poll.
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- "Fifty years have gone by. We have had so many elections.
What have we got?," Rashid said.
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- TURNOUT QUESTIONED IN PAKISTAN
-
- Kashmiri leaders based in Pakistan said the turnout figures
were wrong, saying only 10 to 11 percent had voted and then often because
of alleged coercion by Indian troops.
-
- "We congratulate the people of Kashmir that despite
coercion they upheld the flag of struggle with courage and determination
and refused to budge against oppression," Kashmiri separatist Ghulam
Mohammad Safi told reporters in Islamabad.
-
- In the latest spate of violence on Wednesday, two people
were killed and at least 20 others wounded, many badly burned, when militants
bombed a bus carrying Hindu pilgrims in Jammu.
-
- "There was a big bang," passenger Sheru told
Reuters. "The bus cracked open and we were thrown out and then the
bus caught fire. Then I fainted."
-
- A few hours later, the twisted, smoldering wreckage of
the bus still lay on the road, luggage scattered all around.
-
- In a separate incident, three party activists working
for the ruling National Conference were gunned down in the volatile Kupwara
district bordering Pakistan, police said.
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- Militants also shot dead two civilians in the Doda district
south of Srinagar, police said.
-
- And five paramilitary troops were killed when their vehicle
ran over a land mine near Srinagar, officials said.
-
- Militants frequently use land mines to attack Indian
troops, viewed by the separatists as an occupying army, but sometimes miss
their target killing ordinary people on the road instead.
-
- A policemen was also killed in a land mine explosion
in Doda district in the south of the state, one of the volatile areas and
the last to vote in a final round of polling next Tuesday.
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- FINAL POLL ON TUESDAY
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- One of the state's most violent districts goes to the
polls next Tuesday in the final round of voting before counting starts.
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- With moderate separatists refusing to take part, the
ruling National Conference party, a pro-Delhi Kashmiri party, is likely
to be returned.
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- India says Kashmir is an integral part of the country
and fears losing it would expose it to other breakaway movements.
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- Islamabad says Kashmiris should be allowed a plebiscite
to decide whether they want to belong to India or Pakistan, in line with
United Nations resolutions passed after the subcontinent was partitioned
at independence in 1947.
-
- The two countries mobilized a million men on their border
after a December attack on India's parliament which New Delhi blamed on
Pakistan-based Islamic militants.
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