Four people were killed and 45 wounded when a powerful car bomb triggered by Islamic militants ripped through a busy intersection in Srinagar on Wednesday, police said. The morning rush-hour blast, which left people bleeding on the road and turned vehicles into twisted wrecks, was the third attack in three days by militants. âThere has been a massive car bomb explosion,â said a senior state police official. âFour people have died and 45 people are injured.âA little-known group, Al Arifeen, claimed responsibility for the explosion in a telephone call to the Kashmir News Service. Police said that it was a front for the banned group Lashkar-e-Taiba. The blast, so strong that it was heard several kilometres away, was at an intersection close to Dal Lake, a tourist attraction, and near the offices of the Jammu and Kashmir Bank. The explosion blew out the bankâs 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.
Police officer HK Lohia said that the militants parked the explosives-packed car before it exploded. A preliminary inquiry showed that âthe driver of the vehicle escaped the scene before triggering the explosion,â he said. A former state government minister, Usman Majid, a one-time militant who suffered minor facial injuries in the blast, said that he believed himself to have been the target of the bombing.