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10 injured in

Jammu blast

JAMMU: At least 10 people were wounded, three of them critically, on Tuesday when a bomb exploded outside a guest house in the centre of Jammu, winter capital of India's troubled Jammu and Kashmir state, police said.

Police said five people in the lobby of the guest house and five people outside were wounded by the blast near a bus stand.

"It was a bomb which exploded, injuring 10 people," a police official said. "The bomb was placed on the road side and a bus coming from inside the bus stand suffered minor damage."

Police closed off the neighbourhood and were searching for more explosives, the Press Trust of India (PTI) said. PTI said the guest house was damaged in the blast.

Authorities had tightened security in the state ahead of Tuesday's celebration of the anniversary of Indian independence, anticipating attacks by separatists waging a five-year-old revolt against Indian rule.

HOSTAGES: NO SWAP

Meanwhile India ruled out on Monday swapping jailed Kashmiri separatists for four Western captive, as the decapitated body of a murdered fifth captive arrived in New Delhi for a post mortem examination.

The Indian decision was made despite the beheading of Morwegian Hans Christian Ostroe and a threat to kill the remaining hostages - an American, a German and two Britons.

"There is no question of releasing any militant in exchange for the foreign tourists held hostage by the militants in the Kashmir valley," the Press Turst of India quoted Internal Security Minister Rajesh Pilot as saying.

Ostroe's mutilated body, laid in a simple wooden coffin with a floral wreath atop, arrived in a New Delhi airport from Srinagar to grieving relatives. It was transferred to a hospital for an autopsy to determine the cause of death.

A senior government official said Ostroe was emaciated and had been "very, very ill".

A note apparently written by Ostroe and discovered in his underclothes indicated he had not expected to survive the kidnap ordeal, a government spokesman said.

"He wrote that he didn't expect to get out alive," the spokesman told Reuter.

In the interim, an Indian intermediary has made fresh contact with the militants holding the four Westerners.

"There was a contact this morning," a spokesman for the government of Jammu and Kashmir state, KB Jandial, told reporters in Srinagar, the state's summer capital.

Jandial, who said the intermediary had been in regular touch with the militants during the six-week hostage ordeal, offered no details on the results of the most recent contact.

According to a report from Bonn, Germany's Foreign Ministry has set up a crisis team to work with India towards securing the release of four Westerners held hostage in Kashmir, officials said on Monday.

The fate of the four Westerners was hanging in the balance after the militants beheaded Norwegian captive and set a deadline for the Indian government to free jailed comrades.

German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel condenned the killing and said in a statement that the guerrillas should "not add another crime to their inhuman act".

He called for the other hostages to be released immediately.

The brutal killing of Norwegian Hans Christian Ostroe and the Tuesday deadline heaped pressure on the Indian government to try to mount a raid to rescue the four remaining captive tourists, all seized while trekking in the Himalayan region.

"Indian dogs, if you do not fulfil our demands, the others will suffer the same fate," said a note from the shadowy al-Faran guerrilla group near the decapitated corpse of Ostore.

New Delhi's strategy had been to try to negotiate the release of Ostroe and the other hostages - German Dirk Hasert, American Donald Hutchings and Britons Paul Wells and Keith Mangan.

Indian Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao, expressing shock and disgust at Ostroe's killing, ordered his government to coordinate efforts to free the hostages.

He stopped short of saying there would be a rescue raid, but the government held an emergency meeting in New Delhi to consider mounting such an operation.

SECURITY COUNCIL

The UN Security Council on Monday condemned the kidnapping by Kashmiri separatists of five Western tourists, one of whom has been decapitated and the others threatened with a similar fate, and demanded the immediate release of the all captives.

"The Security Council strongly condemns the kidnapping of civilians in Kashmir, as a result of which one Norwegian national was killed," council President Nugroho Wisnumurti of Indonesia said in a statement read to reporters.

"The Security is deeply concerned over the reappearance of kidnapping, an act of international terrorism condemned by the international community. The Security Council demands the immediate release of all detainees," he added.

The statement was issued after closed-door consultations on a number of topics during which the German representative raised the plight of the hostages, abducted more than a month ago.

Britain said on Monday it was reviewing every option to win the release of two Britons held hostage in Kashmir after a Norwegian captive was beheaded.

"We are giving every assistance we can," junior Foreign Office minister Sir Nicholas Bonsor told BBC radio. "I cannot go into details but every possible option is being examined very closely."

The Foreign Office would add nothing, saying only that Britain was gravely concerned for the men's safety.

KILLING DENOUNCED

In Pakistan, a Kashmiri militant organization accused by Indian officials of being behind the kidnapping of Western tourists in Indian-held Kashmir condemned on Monday the beheading of a Norwegian hostage.

Maulana Muhammad Farooq Kashmiri, chief of the Pakistan-based Harkat-Ul-Ansar, said in a statement the killing of Norwegian tourist Hans Christian Ostroe was an inhuman act meant to defame Kashmiri Mujahideen guerrillas.

"Harkat-Ul-Ansar has several times appealed for the safe release of the European tourists," Kashmiri said.

He called clandesting Al-Faran group, which was claimed responsibility for killing Ostroe and for holding four other Westerns, "a brain-child of Indian intelligence agencies".-Reuter