At least 25 people died and nearly 45 were seriously injured after a suicide bomber detonated a car packed with explosives outside the legislature in northern India's disputed Kashmir state yesterday.
Police said three Islamic militants, dressed in police uniforms, took advantage of the confusion following the blast in the heart of the state's summer capital, Srinagar, slipped into the legislature and engaged the security forces in a fire fight.
Armoured vehicles had surrounded the building and downtown Srinagar was cordoned off as the exchange of fire continued late into the evening.
Officials said the militants got out of the bombers' vehicle just before it exploded at approximately 2 p.m. local time.
Some 30 people were rescued from the building, but an equal number of employees were trapped inside, but it was not known if the militants were holding any of them hostage.
The Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad (Mohammad's Army) group has claimed responsibility for the bombing, telling a Srinagar news service that it was carried out by Wajahat Hussain, a Pakistani national.
Police said the explosives, packed in a stolen jeep belonging to the telephone department, damaged scores of buildings around the tightly-guarded legislature, including shops and a six-storey hotel.
The State Chief Minister, Mr Farooq Abdullah, and his cabinet colleagues had left the building shortly before the explosion.
"Many people were bleeding to death and no one dared to rush to the spot to help them as a gunfight was in progress," Mr Abdul Rashid, a local shopkeeper, said. He claimed that dozens of people, including many policemen, lay in pools of blood at the legislature's entrance.
The Jaish-e-Mohammad was founded in March 2000 by Mr Maulana Masood Azhar (33), an Islamic cleric. He had been released along with three other Kashmiri militants in exchange for 155 hostages hijacked aboard an Indian Airlines airliner to Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, on New Year's Eve in 1999.
Mr Azhar was an ideologue and fundraiser for the Harkat-ul-Ansar (Movement of the Faithful), one of Kashmir's most feared insurgent groups. The group was responsible for beheading a Norwegian tourist and kidnapping five other tourists including two British subjects, an American and a German national in 1995.
The four abducted Westerners are missing and are presumed dead.
The US also proscribed Harkat soon after.
Security officials said after his release Mr Azhar met Osama bin Laden, who provided him with generous funding.
