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By Sheikh Mushtaq

NUNWAN, India, Aug 6 (Reuters) - Suddenly out of the dark pine forest in Indian Kashmir the attackers emerged, hurling grenades and firing at sleeping Hindu pilgrims, shattering the dawn stillness.

By the time the shooting ended an hour later on Tuesday, nine people were dead and 31 wounded, victims of a suspected Islamic militant attack on an annual Hindu pilgrimage in disputed Kashmir, which is at the heart of a military standoff between India and Pakistan.

"When the firing stopped, I came out of the tent and people were lying in blood everywhere," survivor Rakesh Kumar said.

Gaping holes in bloodstained canvas tents were signs of grenades thrown by the attackers that killed those asleep inside.

In the gun battle with security forces guarding the pilgrims, one of the attackers also died, his AK-47 inscribed in Urdu with the words "O God please help me", a phrase often found on weapons belonging to Muslim militants, police said.

Saffron-clad holy man Vijay Kumar, whose friend died, was in his tent when the attackers, believed to number at least three, raked the camp with automatic fire after throwing grenades.

œI heard a big bang and then firing. When I came out there were people running from their tents," Kumar said as tears ran down his cheeks. "The firing seemed to go on for a long time."

Another witness said it lasted an hour.

The raid took place on tents set up beside a pristine, gushing stream in Nunwan, a village near Pahalgam which serves as the base camp for a journey in which thousands of Hindus hike each year to a cave shrine high in the Himalayas.

BRAVE TREACHEROUS TERRAIN

They brave freezing temperatures and -- since a separatist revolt erupted in Kashmir in 1989 -- militant attacks.

They trek along slippery trails and through icy mountain passes to see a nine-foot (three-metre) ice formation believed to be a symbol of Lord Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction.

Last year, Muslim militants killed 29 people taking part in the pilgrimage that draws young and old from ash-smeared Hindu monks, businessmen, elderly women who are ferried in lawn chairs by muscular porters to babies carried by their mothers.

India blamed Tuesday's raid on an offshoot of the hardline Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, accusing it of trying to derail state elections in Kashmir announced last week.

Pakistan said it condemned the "terrorist attack".

The centuries-old pilgrimage has taken on special importance this year, with India demanding Pakistan halt militant infiltration from its soil into Indian Kashmir as a condition for ending the seven-month standoff that almost led to war a couple of months ago.

Pakistan says it has stopped all incursions by rebels seeking to join the separatist revolt in Jammu and Kashmir, mainly Hindu but officially secular India's only Muslim-majority state.

Nearly 80,000 pilgrims have completed the trek this year that runs for a month and ends on August 22.

India has deployed a 12,000-strong security force along the 380-km (240-mile) route, the biggest ever. But officials said it was impossible to keep the entire route safe.

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Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
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