SRINAGAR, Sept 10: India’s ruling party chief Sonia Gandhi on Monday called for Kashmir’s “wounded hearts and minds” to be healed, during a flying visit to the occupied region.

The Congress party leader, who arrived two hours after Muslim rebels bombed a police vehicle in Srinagar, received a rousing welcome at the city’s tightly guarded convention centre where a partisan audience chanted “Long live Sonia”. “For the past 20 years Kashmir has witnessed umpteen problems and sufferings,” Ms Gandhi told thousands of women from the state’s social welfare department, non-governmental organisations and Congress party members.

Monday’s bomb attack, which injured three people, took place several kilometres from the convention site in Srinagar, urban hub of the revolt.

Gandhi, who last visited the region in the wake of a devastating earthquake in October 2005, made the trip at a time when violence has ebbed in the region.—AFP