Nine people were killed and 22 badly injured when a bomb ripped through the carriage of a night train in northern India, a few hours before the country celebrated its 53rd Independence Day yesterday.
The explosion came as India, fearing Islamic guerrilla attacks during the celebrations, tightened security, especially in the northern Himalayan state of Kashmir and in New Delhi.
Police said the bomb attack aboard the Sabarmati Express at Roza village, about 350 miles east of New Delhi, was linked to the 11-year civil war in Kashmir for an Islamic homeland in which over 30,000 have died.
They blamed Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence which India says is running Kashmir's "proxy war", an allegation Islamabad denies.
Officials said Pakistani artillery also shelled Indian posts in northern Kashmir's Uri, Karnah and Kumwara regions in which at least one girl was injured. India and Pakistan, which have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir since independence in 1947, govern portions of Kashmir and claim the rest.
Meanwhile, the Indian Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, in his traditional address in Delhi's Old City, warned Pakistan against using force to redraw national borders in Kashmir. "It would be folly if it [Pakistan] thinks it can secure anything through undeclared war." He also said that terrorist activities and proposals for peace talks could not go together.
On Pakistan's independence day, celebrated a day earlier than India's, its military ruler, Gen Pervez Musharraf, pledged continued support for Kashmir's civil war, even as the President, Mr Rafiq Tarar, warned that the dispute had become a nuclear flashpoint between the two neighbours.
Security across India was tight for Independence Day.
In the run-up six Indian paramilitary personnel were killed and 40 injured at the weekend in landmine blasts in Kashmir. The state's largest Muslim separatist group, the Hezb-ul-Mujahidden, warned of further strikes to disrupt yesterday's formal proceedings at the Bakshi stadium in Srinagar where the Chief Minister, Mr Farooq Abdullah, unfurled the Indian flag, an act the insurgents interpret as a direct challenge.
Peace hopes were dashed in Kashmir last week when the Hezb-ul-Mujahideen called off its three-month ceasefire.
