Gunmen tried for a second time to kill a leading candidate in Indian-controlled Kashmir yesterday as at least 12 people died in election-related violence days before a second round of election voting, police said.
Sakina Yatoo, a legislative candidate for the ruling National Conference party in Tuesday's polls, was on her way to a campaign stop in a village south of Srinagar when her motorcade was hit by a remote-controlled bomb, police said.
Guerrillas then surrounded her car and opened fire, killing two of her bodyguards and a local resident. Yatoo apparently survived unhurt because the car was armored, but police gave no further details of the ambush.
The attack on Yatoo, who is also Jammu-Kashmir's tourism minister, was the second in less than a week. On Sunday, militants detonated a remote-controlled bomb and opened fire as she was campaigning, killing two of her bodyguards and wounding two others.
Police did not immediately name any suspects in the attack, and no one had claimed responsibility.
Yesterday's attack also came just days before the second round of voting to select a state assembly in Jammu-Kashmir, India's only Muslim majority state. Elections in Yatoo's constituency will be held Oct. 1. The crucial state elections are staggered over four dates -- Sept. 16 and Sept. 24, and Oct. 1 and Oct. 8.
Islamic militants fighting to separate Kashmir from India have demanded a boycott of the elections. They have allegedly killed nearly 100 political activists, including a government minister, since the elections were announced last month.
Two of Yatoo's bodyguards were killed instantly in the explosion yesterday, a police official said on condition of anonymity in Kulgam, 65km south of Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu-Kashmir. Naja Bano, a Kulgam resident, was also killed in the explosion. Four paramilitary soldiers were wounded.
Also yesterday, three unidentified gunmen forced three sus-pected activists of the Communist Party of India out of a house in Neelu and shot them at close range, said Ghulam Mohiud-din, deputy superintendent of police in Anantnag, the police station closest to Neelu. Neelu is 70km south of Srinagar.
Two of the suspected activists died immediately while the third was in a hospital, where his condition was described as serious, the officer said. He did not name any suspects in the attack.
In another incident in Kulgam, unidentified assailants gunned down a truck driver and his assistant early yesterday. Police said they suspected that the driver, Pal Singh, and his assistant were killed by separatist rebels.
Elsewhere in Jammu-Kashmir, four suspected guerrillas of the outlawed Islamic militant group Harkat-ul Jehad-e-Islami were killed in a fierce gun battle with the Indian army, a defense ministry official in Srinagar said on condition of anonymity.
Details of the gun battle in Badijalan, a village near Kulgam, were not immediately available. Suspected militants also shot and killed a school teacher, Javed Iqbal Shah in Palpora, 40km northeast of Srinagar, police said.
In another attack, suspected militants hurled a grenade at a police patrol but missed the target in Kokernag, 70km south of Srinagar. The blast wounded five civilian passers-by, police said.
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