28 tourists from West Bengal injured in two Srinagar blasts

Srinagar, May 31 (UNI) Twenty-eight tourists, including seven women and one child, from West Bengal were injured when two grenades exploded in their buses at Dalgate near here this afternoon.

Sources said unidentified militants hurled two hand grenades at crowded Dalgate which exploded in two tourists buses--JK02Q- 0574 and CH03 L-8181 at crowded Dalgate, area, a stone's throw away from famed Dal Lake.

The injured were admitted to SMHS hospital. However, some of them were later shifted to Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences at Soura and Bone and Joint hospital Barzulla.

A large number of Kashmiri youths thronged hospital to donate blood for the injured tourists.

An injured tourist told UNI that they were on way to hotel from Gulmarg when the blast took place at 1810 hours.

A boy escaped unhurt in the blast after he had exchanged his seat with his father in the bus. ''My father was bleeding as he received splinter wounds,'' the boy said in Bengali.

Shopkeepers in the Dalgate area closed down their establishments immediately after the blast in protest against the incident.

Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front chairman Mohammad Yaseen Malik and other separatist organisations have strongly condemned the attack on tourists.

This was the third incident involving tourists less than two week.

Four tourists were killed and six others from Surat, Gujarat, were killed when a grenade lobbed from outside exploded in their bus at Batpora Hazratbal when they were on way to Mughal garden on May 25 , an hour after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh left for New Delhi after chairing two-day Round Table conference on Kashmir issue.

On May 23 a tourist from Madhya Pradesh, Kanaya Lal, and a local driver were killed in a grenade blast at Soura on the city outskirts.

Almost all the separatist organisation and militant outfits have condemned the attack on tourists.

UNI BAS ASM VD RK2013