Kashmiri Newspaper Editor Shot

By: (AP) Masked gunmen wounded a Kashmiri newspaper editor on Wednesday as he rode toward his office on a motor scooter, police said.

Shahid Rashid, editor of the Urdu-language daily State Reporter was shot twice while heading to his office in Chanapora suburb of Srinagar, the summer capital of India's Jammu-Kashmir state, police said.

Local residents carried him to the hospital in critical condition, and doctors said he was out of danger after surgery.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Journalists have been targets in Kashmir since Indian security forces began battling an Islamic militant insurgency in 1989.

India and Pakistan have both claimed the Muslim-majority province since 1947 and have fought two wars over it. India accuses Pakistan of training, arming, and aiding the militants fighting to separate Kashmir from India and join it to Pakistan. The Islamabad government says it supports the militants' cause but since last month has cracked down on their infiltrations across the frontier, after international pressure.

Journalists have been attacked several times this year. In April, a hand grenade exploded outside the office of an English-language newspaper, The Tribune, causing minor shrapnel wounds to its correspondent.

In May, an editor of another English daily, Kashmir Images, was shot by unidentified gunmen in his office in Srinagar. He survived the attack.