One of the dead and several of the injured were Indian journalists.It was the most destructive terrorist attack in Srinagar since the spring and seemed designed to extinguish hopes that Hizbul Mujahideen’s cancellation of the ceasefire was only a blip in Kashmir’s ongoing peace process.Only minutes before the blast, Jammu & Kashmir’s Chief Minister, Dr Farooq Abdullah, in an interview with The Independent, was encouraging the belief that more peace moves could be expected soon. “Just wait a few days,” Dr Abdullah said.The Kashmiri press, too, was yesterday doing its best to look on the brightest of bright sides, interpreting the refusal of separatist leaders to comment on the end of the ceasefire, following a four-hour conference on Wednesday, as a promising and positive development. Ordinary Kashmiris greeted the return to violence-as-usual with expressions of despair and misery.The brief, 15-day ceasefire – even though the peace it brought was only patchy – reminded them of the good old days 11 and more years ago. “I could go to a movie, come back at 1.30 in the morning without any worries,” said a driver based in central Srinagar. “My wife and daughters could go out and come back late in the evening and the only thing that they had to worry about was stray dogs.”Today, few venture out after dark, except in case of dire need, lest they be stopped and harassed by paramilitary patrols or worse. “If I’m a little late getting home these days, my family is distracted with worry,” the driver went on.The Chief Minister, Dr Abdullah, who has a British wife and who has worked in England as a doctor, said: “It is unfortunate that the ceasefire has been called off It saddens us all We hope it is a temporary phase. You must have seen yourself that people are tired of guns, they want peace.

It is time for peace.”He blamed the calling off of the ceasefire on the conditions which Hizbul Mujahideen imposed after it began, demanding Pakistan’s involvement in any peace negotiations. “As far as I remember,” Dr Abdullah said, “the idea was Kashmir talking to India That should be the first stage. There has to be sincerity on all sides.”Dr Abdullah also reacted sharply to the proposals floated by a United States-based think-tank, the Kashmir Study Group, urging the three-way division of Jammu & Kashmir following the lines of the Buddhist-Muslim-Hindu religious divide. The proposal has recently found support among the India’s Hindu right,Wholeheartedly rejecting the idea, Dr Abdullah said it was a reprise of the “Two Nation Theory” which brought about the partition of India in 1947.

He said: “I have seen what happened in Bosnia, I have seen 1947 as a young kid I don’t want the blood of innocent Muslims on my hands.”. A Briton has been arrested by Thai police in connection with the murder of a Welsh backpacker found raped and strangled in a hostel. A Briton has been arrested by Thai police in connection with the murder of a Welsh backpacker found raped and strangled in a hostel.
The man was arrested late last night and is being questioned by police over the murder of 23-year-old Liverpool University graduate Kirsty Jones.The body of Ms Jones, from Brecon, south Wales, was found yesterday morning lying face down in her room, with a piece of cloth wrapped around her neck.Thai police said they believed the man had been a fellow guest at the Aree hostel 422 miles north of Bangkok in Chiang Mai. He is being held at the main city police station in the hill resort.Ms Jones’s parents, Sue and Glyn, are expected to fly back to Britain today from Spain, where they were holidaying when they learned of the news of their daughter’s death.She had booked in alone at the guest house in Chiang Mai, one of the country’s least expensive areas and a magnet for young Western holiday-makers Her body was discovered by fellow guests and the manager. They had become suspicious when she failed to come out of her room.Lieutenant Colonel Suvit Khunprasert, of the Thai police, said guests had heard the sound of a struggle, a man shouting and swearing and a scream from Ms Jones’s room the previous night.

But they failed to act because, they said, they thought it may have been a “lovers’ quarrel”.Ms Jones had spent part of the evening before her death with another British woman, 25-year-old Sarah Wiggett, of Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire.”We were out on the town last night; I’m staying at a different guesthouse to Kirsty so we parted ways at the end of the night,” Ms Wiggett, a student at Canterbury University, said.”I found out what happened at 6.30 tonight [yesterday] I only met her last week She was a really nice, fun girl. I think she had a round-the-world ticket and her friend was flying out in a couple of weeks to join her in Bangkok. I don’t think she had a boyfriend.”Police have been told by another guest, an Italian woman, that Ms Jones had struck up a friendship with a man staying at the resort. She told police that Ms Jones had gone shopping with him and went for drinks during the day and part of the evening of Wednesday, the day the screams were heard at the guest house.Thailand has always been a favourite destination for backpackers, made even more popular by the film The Beach. But it can also be dangerous; this year alone, three British tourists have been killed and 22 seriously injured.In June, 18 Britons were among 166 passengers rescued from a blazing ferry minutes before it sank. A student nurse, Andrea Taylor, 20, was gored to death by a performing elephant at an animal park near Pattaya in April.