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32 dead hindu temple { September 25 2002 }

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   http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62576-2002Sep24.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62576-2002Sep24.html

32 Dead in Hindu Temple Attack
Indian Commandos Storm Site After Gunmen Kill 29

By Thomas Kutty Abraham
Reuters
Wednesday, September 25, 2002; Page A16


GANDHINAGAR, India, Sept. 25 (Wednesday) -- Commandos today gained control of a Hindu temple in western India that had been taken over by gunmen who killed 29 men, women and children and detained dozens more during a 14-hour siege. Two gunmen were killed in the raid.

Earlier, witnesses reported a long exchange of fire between the elite National Security Guard commandos and the gunmen, followed by two big explosions. A policeman died in the crossfire, and 10 more were wounded.

There was no immediate word on the fate of the dozens of people authorities had locked in buildings in the sprawling temple complex in an effort to keep them safe.

"They are all safe," said state police intelligence inspector K.K. Mysorewala.

Police said more than 70 people were injured and about 25 were trapped inside the Akshardham temple complex in Gandhinagar, capital of the western state of Gujarat, where at least 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed in Hindu-Muslim bloodshed earlier this year.

Indian Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani blamed "the enemies of the country" for the attack, the most serious in India since Islamic militants allegedly based in Pakistan raided the grounds of the Indian Parliament in December, triggering a military standoff between the nuclear-armed rivals.

Without naming Pakistan, Advani suggested Islamabad was using the attack to shift attention from the disputed region of Kashmir. State elections are currently underway in the Indian-controlled part, the state of Jammu and Kashmir. "I see in this a very deliberate design," he said.

Analysts have said another big attack could reignite tensions between the neighbors, who came close to war in June and still have a million troops massed along their common border.

After the raid, the police dragged out the bodies of the two gunmen to show to reporters. The pair appeared to be in their early 20s, and carried dry fruits, dates, sweets and Indian notes and coins in their pockets. They were also carrying letters written in Urdu, a dominant language among South Asian Muslims.

"They resemble Kashmiri militants but I can't say anything for certain because they are not carrying identity," Brigadier Sita Pathi, who headed an anti-terrorist force which stormed the temple, told reporters.

The bloodbath in Gandhinagar began Tuesday as devotees gathered for evening prayers in the pink sandstone temple. The gunmen stormed in, firing at random.

They "barged into the temple and started firing. . . . I managed to run and somehow escape," said Vipul Soni, 15, whose clothes were spattered with blood.

"There were about 600 people" in the complex when the raid began, said Gurumukh Palwani, 40, who escaped with his two children. "Thank God I'm alive."

A hard-line Hindu group linked to India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) plans to call a strike to protest the attack. "We are holding a meeting later today to decide on it. It could either be a state-wide strike or a national strike," Jaideep Patel, general secretary of the World Hindu Council's Gujarat unit, told reporters outside the temple.

Pakistani Information Minister Nisar Memon condemned the temple attack and said it reflected the failure of Hindu nationalist leaders to build a tolerant society in Gujarat.

"We condemn this attack on an Indian temple by whoever has done it," he said. "This is the kind of society that the leadership of the BJP has built in Gujarat."

Akshardham temple is a Hindu religious and cultural complex visited by about 2 million people annually, according to the Web site of the Swaminarayan sect that runs it.

The imposing 10-story temple houses a golden idol of Lord Swaminarayan, the 18th-century Hindu monk who started the sect. Swaminarayan's followers believe him to be an incarnation of Lord Vishnu, the Hindu god of preservation.

The sect says the monument is made of 6,000 tons of pink sandstone, with no steel or cement, to ensure it will last for 1,000 years.

Gandhinagar is named after independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi, who dreamed of a free country where Hindus and Muslims would live in harmony. Instead, Gandhi witnessed the bloody partition of the subcontinent into secular but mostly Hindu India and Islamic Pakistan at independence in 1947.



© 2002 The Washington Post Company



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