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Bhutto Calls Non-Kashmiri Fighters "Terrorists" as 24 Die in Violence
SRINAGAR, India, Nov 29 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto said Thursday that non-Kashmiris fighting Indian troops in the disputed territory are not freedom fighters but "terrorists," as violence claimed 24 more lives, including two children, the same day.
In an interview published Thursday in the Greater Kashmir, a daily in Indian-administered territory, Bhutto said, "Let me clear here that non-Kashmiris are not freedom fighters and indigenous Kashmiris are fighting for their freedom."
"I also call non-Kashmiri militants as terrorists," she told the newspaper from New Delhi, where she is on a private visit.
Bhutto had been asked about India's stand that Pakistan supports "cross-border terrorism" in the form of armed Muslim activists crossing the disputed border to target Indian forces.
Pakistan considers the struggle in Kashmir part of an indigenous drive for self-determination. Islamabad denies supporting "cross-border terrorism," but is open about its moral and diplomatic support for Kashmir's freedom struggle.
Bhutto claimed her position might eventually be adopted by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, noting that she was ahead of Musharraf in breaking ranks with Afghanistan's former ruling Taliban regime.
"What I say first is followed by Musharraf later," Bhutto said.
Bhutto, who in 1988 became Pakistan's first woman prime minister, said she opposed hardline Kashmiri groups such as the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba. She said these are groups "which are trying to hijack the Kashmir movement."
"We believe the people of Kashmir should be given right of self-determination," added Bhutto. "They should choose their own future."
Separatists in Kashmir criticized Bhutto's comments.
Leading female separatist leader Aasiya Andrabi said that Bhutto, "…knows nothing about Islam, has no right to pass comments against the
mujahedin. Kashmiris will never tolerate people dubbing great warriors as terrorists."
"Be it Lashkar-e-Taiba or Jaish-e-Mohammed, it is because of the sacrifices of their cadres that Kashmir issue is on everyone's lips," said Andrabi, who heads the Dukhtaran-e-Milat (Daughters of Faith) political group.
The Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen group said Bhutto was siding with India by speaking "Indian language."
Spokesman Jameel Ahmed said, "Both Kashmiri and non-Kashmiri militants are bricks of the same wall and no one can succeed in separating us or creating differences within."
In the region meanwhile, fourteen armed activists were killed overnight and on Thursday, along with eight Indian security force personnel and two children, most of them in fighting, police said.
Three activists and seven Indian border guards, including two officers, were killed in a six-hour overnight gunbattle in Achibal village, 31 miles north of Kashmir's summer capital Srinagar, and two other guards were wounded.
A police spokesman said the gunbattle erupted when Indian security forces entered Achibal after being tipped off about the presence of heavily armed Muslim activists in the area.
An assistant commandant of the paramilitary Border Security Force (BSF) was killed and two BSF personnel were wounded when the Muslim activists opened fire, the spokesman said, adding that six more died as the battle progressed.
Reinforcements were rushed in and the village was sealed off to prevent the activists' escape. Residents were told to stay indoors.
A house from which the activists targeted security forces was destroyed when troops fired rockets at it. Police said bodies of three activists were recovered from the debris of the damaged house.
Border guards, assisted by counter-insurgency troops of the Indian army and local police, started a house-to-house search Thursday to sweep out other activists believed to be hiding in the area, but no one was arrested and the searches were later called off.
The Pakistan-based separatist group Lashkar-e-Taiba said its members were involved in the gunbattle.
"During the encounter more than a dozen security force personnel were killed," Lashkar spokesman Abu Osama told Agence France-Presse (AFP), adding that one of the group's Kashmiri activists also died in the clash.
Meanwhile, two Muslim boys aged nine and 11 were killed when an abandoned explosive device detonated after they touched it in Magam village of the southern Kashmir district of Anantnag overnight, police said.
On Thursday, Indian security forces shot dead four Muslim activists near Kokernag, 42 miles south of Srinagar during an encounter, police said.
An Indian army soldier and an activist were killed in another gunbattle in the northern Kashmir district of Kupwara, which borders Pakistan-administered Kashmir, on Thursday, police said.
And six activists died in separate encounters elsewhere in Kashmir late Wednesday evening and Thursday, police said.
Separatist violence has surged in Indian Kashmir since the United States launched attacks on Taliban-ruled Afghanistan on October 7.
Eleven Indian army soldiers and nine Kashmiri activists died near the highway township of Surankote, 335 miles south of Srinagar, after a two-day encounter that ended Wednesday.
More than 35,000 people have been killed in violence in Indian Kashmir since the beginning of the Muslim struggle against Indian rule in the Himalayan region in 1989. Pakistan and India have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir.
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