960428

Death toll in Indian

bus blast rises to 15

NEW DELHI: The death toll from a powerful bomb blast in a crowded bus in a northern town near the Indian capital rose to 15 on Sunday as two people died in hospital of their injuries, police said. Jyoti Belur, assistant superintendent of police in the town of Modinagar, where the bombing occurred Saturday, said police had still not determined whether it was linked to Saturday's general elections in India.

"We have started our investigations," Belur told AFP by telephone. "It is too premature to say who was responsible for the attack."

A little known Moslem militant group in Kashmir claimed responsibility for the blast in an Urdu-language statement released in the Kashmir summer capital Srinaga r on Sunday.

The Jammu based Kashmir Islami Harkat-ul-Momneen said in a statement that it had carried out the attack along with the Khalistan Liberation Force, a Sikh militant group.

The statement said the bus was targetted because it carried activists of India's ruling Congress (I) party and the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People's Party).

The Harkat-ul-Momneen also claimed to have set off a bomb in a New Delhi o n April 20 which killed 17 people, but the authorities later said it appeared the building had simply collapsed and there had been no bomb.

Muslim militants are waging a indepence campaign in Kashmir, India's only Moslem-majority state.-APP