SRINAGAR, May 13: A Muslim man, his daughter and son were killed in a “gift” bomb explosion while troops shot dead seven militants in separate clashes in Indian Kashmir, police said on Friday. The explosion occurred in the house of Mohammed Sayeed, 45, late Thursday in the southern Kashmir town of Bijbehara, a police spokesman said.
“Sayeed and his two children died on the spot while his wife was seriously injured,” the spokesman said. The son was aged 20 while the daughter was 22. Police said they were mystified why the family was targeted as they had no political affiliations.
An unidentified person delivered the wrapped gift earlier in the day and when the family “started opening it there was an explosion,” the police spokesman said. The fresh violence came after a mother and daughter died and 50 people were injured, many of them schoolchildren, on Thursday, in a grenade attack by militants in Srinagar.
The militants hurled a grenade at a security vehicle but missed, and the device exploded outside the gates of a missionary school. It was the second attack in two days in Srinagar. On Wednesday, two people died and 34 were injured when militants detonated a car bomb in a commercial district.
The two explosions in Srinagar also came after the state capital shifted its operations here from Jammu, the winter capital, on Monday. There has been an upsurge in violence since India and Pakistan last month resumed a Kashmir bus service to promote peace in the divided region and reunite friends and relatives who have not seen each other for decades.—AFP
