JAMMU, INDIA, June 16, 2002: Islamic guerrillas threw grenades and fired guns at Hindu pilgrims trudging down from a mountaintop shrine in Jammu-Kashmir, starting a battle that killed three Hindu children and three of the pilgrims’ Muslim escorts, police said Sunday. This is a revision to yesterday’s report that stated only two people were killed. Religious tension swept through two towns near the site of the fighting Saturday after rumors spread that the Muslims, Muslim members of the local Village Defense Committee, armed and trained by the government to defend against guerrilla attacks, were actually killed by Hindus avenging the deaths of the children — two boys and a teen-age girl. Police in Jammu, the winter capital of Jammu-Kashmir, said militants lobbed grenades and fired automatic weapons at about 500 Hindu pilgrims Saturday afternoon as they walked down a mountain path from the shrine of Hadh Mata, 120 miles northeast of Jammu. Seven pilgrims were wounded, and three of them — two boys, 11 and 13, and a girl, 17 — died on way to a hospital, police said. Police and armed escorts traveling with the pilgrims fired back, and a gunbattle persisted for hours, police said. Two Muslim escorts and a Muslim official traveling as a representative of the government were killed. Police said they died in the cross fire, but the rumors that their deaths were retaliation sparked religious tension in the mountain towns of Kishtwar and Bhadarwah. Police stepped up security to avert clashes.
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