HUMHAMA, May 24 (2004): A frontline Kashmiri militant group is likely to launch more revenge attacks in the disputed region, a senior Indian official said on Monday, a day after 29 troops and their families were killed by a land mine.

Sunday’s attack on a highway that links the Kashmir Valley to the rest of India was the deadliest since New Delhi and Islamabad began a peace process last year to resolve their decades-old dispute.

Hizbul Mujahideen, a leading rebel group fighting for Kashmir’s merger with Pakistan, claimed responsibility for the explosion that hit a bus carrying Border Security Force (BSF) men and their families.

“It was a revenge attack because some important leaders and office-bearers (of Hizbul Mujahideen) were recently killed,” BSF chief Ajay Raj Sharma told a news conference in Humhama, a security camp in the district of Budgam in western Kashmir.

“So this is not the end of the story. Since it is not the end, any number of incidents can repeat,” he said.
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