8 tourists killed in Kashmir grenade attacks

In the bloodiest of the attacks blamed on Islamic separatist rebels, six tourists including five women were killed and 15 people wounded when a grenade blasted a minibus in Srinagar's main tourist district.

A spokesman for the police control room said the injured included bystanders near the minibus. All of the tourists were from India's West Bengal state. The dead included a mother, her son and her daughter-in-law.

The grenade was hurled by suspected rebels near the busy Dalgate area of the mountain-ringed Dal Lake in Srinagar, he said.

"The grenade landed inside the minibus and exploded with a bang," said local resident Imtiaz Hussain, adding that it smashed the vehicle's windows and sent people running for cover in all directions.

A second grenade attack in Srinagar's busy Regal Chowk injured four people who were travelling in a car registered outside Kashmir, police said.

In two more attacks on private passenger jeeps near Lal Chowk, the main commercial centre, two tourists were killed and ten people were injured.

The dead men were tourists from the eastern state of Bihar and most of the injured were not Kashmiris. The attacks sparked fires in the vehicles.

A fifth explosion took place near Srinagar's tourist reception center and injured ten people, all of them Kashmiris, police said.

A suspect was held after the fifth blast and was being questioned, a police officer said.

Kashmir's Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad, visiting the injured in hospital, blamed Islamic militants.

"These people are killers of innocent people. They are enemies of people and we will have to fight them out," he said.

No militant group claimed responsibility for the Kashmir attacks.