Five people were killed and 60 wounded in a suicide car bomb attack at a busy intersection in the Indian occupied Kashmir on Wednesday, police said.
The morning rush-hour blast in occupied Srinagar, that left people bleeding on the road and turned vehicles into twisted wrecks, was the third attack in three days by freedom fighters "There has been a massive car bomb explosion," said a senior state police official The five dead included the suicide bomber, police said. Sixty others were wounded including 10 women and a dozen policemen.
"Preliminary investigations indicate that the body of the suicide bomber was blown into pieces," a police statement said.
A little-known freedom fighter group, Al Arifeen, claimed responsibility for the explosion in a telephone call to the Kashmir News Service. Police said it was a front for the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba.
The blast, so strong it was heard several kilometers away, was at an intersection close to scenic Dal Lake, a tourist haunt, and near the offices of the Jammu and Kashmir Bank, the state's main bank.
The explosion blew out the bank's windows and many of the wounded were bank employees.
Ambulances rushed to the blood-spattered site, a scene of chaos with some victims trapped in cars while others lay screaming on the road.
Altaf Hussain was in a bus when the explosion occurred. "I could feel metal splinters hitting me all over," he said from his hospital bed. "I thought 'This is the end of my life'."
A former state government minister, Usman Majid, who suffered minor facial injuries and was once a freedom fighter, said he believed he was the freedom fighters' target.