Police say suicide attacker kills 3 soldiers in Pakistan-administered Kashmir

Bomber kills 3 soldiers in Pakistani Kashmir

MUZAFFARABAD, Pakistan — A suicide bomber struck an army facility in the Pakistan-controlled portion of Kashmir on Wednesday, killing at least three soldiers and wounding 11 others in the latest violence to strike the country.

Javed Iqbal, police chief in the Himalayan region of Kashmir, said the attacker targeted an army barracks near the town of Rawalakot.

Another police official, Zubair Ahmed, said the attacker detonated his explosives after guards stopped him at the barracks gate. He said the dead and wounded had been transported to a military hospital.

More than 600 people have been killed in Pakistan in attacks by militants, many of them targeting the government, since mid-October, when the army launched a major offensive against the Pakistani Taliban’s stronghold of South Waziristan in the northwest.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Wednesday’s attack in Kashmir.

Although such attacks are rare in that area, a suicide bomber on Dec. 28 struck a Shiite procession in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, killing eight people and wounding another 80.

Kashmir is divided between Pakistan and India, and both claim it in its entirety. The two neighbors have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir after gaining independence from Britain in 1947.

The prime minister of Pakistan’s part of Kashmir, Raja Farooq Haider, condemned the attack and vowed to defeat terrorism.

“We will never tolerate any attack on the Pakistan army,” he said in televised remarks.