SRINAGAR, May 31 (2005): A group of separatist leaders from Indian Kashmir will travel to the Pakistani part of the divided region this week on a trip that offers them a rare chance to talk to militants and leaders there. The Kashmiri politicians' trip by bus on Thursday comes as nuclear-armed India and Pakistan make incremental progress in a cautious peace process that follows decades of distrust and two wars over disputed Kashmir. "We are going to understand the hearts and minds of the Pakistani and Kashmiri...

SRINAGAR, May 13 (2005):It was an emotional homecoming for Farida Gani, but also one that sparked a fierce desire to reclaim her ancestral property in Indian Kashmir left behind after her family moved to Pakistan. Despite being overwhelmed by emotion when she made the historic bus journey from Pakistani Kashmir to the Indian part of the Himalayan territory in April, 60-year-old Gani filed a claim for her father's property before returning to Pakistan. Gani's family left India in 1947 when she was three years...

SRINAGAR, May 12 (2005); Suspected Muslim rebels detonated a grenade on Thursday as children left a Christian missionary school in Indian Kashmir, killing two women and wounding about 50 people including 20 pupils, police said. "Please save me, I don't want to die. Call my parents," screamed a girl, her leg covered in blood, outside the school in Srinagar. Distraught parents, many of them weeping, searched for their children at the scene of the blast in the centre of the main city of Kashmir where separatist rebels...

SRINAGAR, May 11 (2005): A crude bomb planted by Muslim separatist rebels ripped through a vehicle in the heart of Kashmir's main city of Srinagar on Wednesday, killing two people and wounding 35 others. "It was a ground shaking explosion. I saw a huge cloud of dust and the injured were crying for help," witness Dilfiza Shah said. "Some of them were lying in pools of blood." Violence in the Himalayan region has eased since a peace process between India and Pakistan started 18 months ago, but there are still attacks on...

NEW DELHI, May 4 (2005): The level of violence in Indian Kashmir, battered by a separatist revolt for more than 15 years, declined considerably in 2004 over the previous year, the interior ministry said on Wednesday. An annual report of the ministry said the number of violent incidents reported in 2004 fell to 707 from 3,041 in the previous year in the Himalayan territory, over which nuclear rivals India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars. "Fairly encouraging polling percent of 35.21 in the Lok Sabha...