Bomb kills 3 outside Pakistan-Kashmir army base

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A bomb exploded outside an army barracks in Pakistani-administered Kashmir.

MUZAFFARABAD, Jan 6 (AFP): A bomb attack killed three security personnel outside an army base in Pakistani-administered Kashmir close to the line separating it from Indian territory Wednesday, police said.
The attack came one day after Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari visited the area, declaring that regional peace depended on resolving the dispute over Kashmir-a fault line that has sparked two wars between India and Pakistan.
The bomb exploded outside a barracks in Tarar Khal, 150 kilometres (94 miles) east of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-administered Kashmir.
"It was a bomb blast. It could be a suicide blast, but we are collecting the evidence," senior police official Irfan Masaood Kishvi told AFP by telephone from the nearby town of Pallandri.
"It was outside the army barracks... Three security personnel have been martyred and three wounded. The injured have been taken to the Combined Military Hospital," Kishvi added.
Kashmir was split into two in the bloody aftermath of independence from British rule over the subcontinent in 1947. Nuclear rivals India and Pakistan each control a part of the mountainous land but both claim the region in full.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed in a nearly 20-year revolt in Indian Kashmir, where Muslim militants have fought against New Delhi's rule, but bomb attacks are rare in the Pakistani administered zone.
Raja Farooq Haider, the elected leader of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, confirmed a bomb exploded in an army area of Tara Khal, a small village with a local population of around 6,500 people.
"The bomb blast took place in an army area. The authorities are on site. We have taken the injured to the nearby Rawala Kot hospital," he told Pakistan's private television channel Geo.