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Kashmiri group claims India blasts
3/10/2006
NEW DELHI, India, Mar 09 (CNN): A previously unknown militant group claimed responsibility for Tuesday's bombings in the holy Indian city of Varanasi that killed 14 people, and threatened additional violence.
The claim was made in a Wednesday phone call to a news agency in Indian-controlled Kashmir. In the call, a man, calling himself Abdulah Jahar, said he was the spokesman for Lashkar-E-Kahar, which translates to Army of Destroyers.
"If atrocities in Kashmir don't stop, the Indian people won't be able to sleep in peace," he warned, suggesting there would be more attacks.
Fourteen people were killed in Tuesday's trio of bombings in Uttar Pradesh, with another 16 critically wounded.
The first blast was in the Hindu Sankat Mochan temple. The other two blasts occurred at a railway station where an express train was boarding, police said. Another bomb found in another part of the city was defused.
Following a general strike and scattered protests on Wednesday, the city of Varanasi was calm and police were investigating the bombings.
Millions of Hindu pilgrims gather annually here for ritual bathing and prayers on the banks of the Ganges.
More than 80 percent of India's billion people are Hindu and relations between them and Muslims, the country's largest religious minority, have been largely peaceful since the partition of the subcontinent at independence from Britain in 1947, when more than 1 million people were killed as overwhelmingly Muslim Pakistan was carved from largely Hindu India.
India and Pakistan have fought two wars over Kashmir since 1947, when they gained independence from great Britain. Sporadic bouts of violence have occurred, often sparked by attacks on temples or mosques.
The two nations are currently engaged in a slow-moving peace process aimed at resolving a host of disputes including the key territorial tussle over Kashmir, where tens of thousands have died since 1989.
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