A woman bomber blew herself up yesterday minutes before an Indian army convoy was to pass on a key highway in Indian controlled Kashmir in the first such attack by a female bomber in the region's separatist conflict, police said.

An armed group claimed five soldiers were killed in the blast, but police denied this, saying there were no other casualties.

The explosion shattered the glass windows of several buildings in the area in Awantipora, a town nearly 30km south of Srinagar, the capital of India's Jammu and Kashmir state, Nissar Ahmad, a police officer, said.

While Kashmiri groups, fighting for independence from India have carried out at least 30 similar bomb attacks since the outbreak of resistance in 1989, this is the first time a woman has carried out an attack there, said Javed Makhdoomi, the inspector-general of state police.

The attack was not in an area of Kashmir affected by Saturday's earthquake.

A person claiming to be a spokesman for the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad armed group claimed responsibility for the attack in a call to the Current News Service, a Srinagar-based news agency.

The caller identified the attacker as Hafsa, a member of the women's wing of the group. Many people in the region go by just one name.

The caller claimed that the blast had destroyed a government vehicle, killing five soldiers.

PHOTO CAPTION

Indian policemen in Kashmir. (AFP)