SRINAGAR, India - A land mine blew up beneath a car carrying a prominent opposition politician Friday in the Himalayan province of Kashmir, killing him and five others, authorities said. Police blamed separatist militants.
The bomb killed Agha Syed Mehdi, an independent politician and a prominent member of the minority Shia sect of Islam, as he traveled in the central town of Mazham Berwa. His driver and four security guards also died.
No one claimed responsibility for the attack. But police said they suspect Islamic militants, who are waging war here to wrest predominantly Muslim Kashmir from India, which is mostly Hindu. More than 26,000 people have been killed since the insurgency began in 1989.
Also Friday, police said four government soldiers and five militants had been killed in a gunbattle that began a day earlier in the district of Badgam. One civilian was killed in the cross fire, police said.
