Kashmiri Separatists Dispense Quake Aid, and the Associated Press is right there to help them out with public relations support. (Hat tip: LGF readers.)

JULLA, India - Shaukat Khan hiked across a valley to collect food and supplies he thought were being handed out by authorities. Instead, he found what thousands of others discovered after the earthquake that shattered their villages: the help was coming from Kashmiri separatists on the Indian side of the disputed territory.

“We are the ones who are here with blood, with food, with medicines — the people can see that,” said Yasin Malik, leader of the separatist Jammu and Kashmir and Liberation Front.

It’s an aid effort that has not gone unnoticed in a land sharply opposed to Indian rule amid a 15-year insurgency that has claimed more than 66,000 lives, mostly civilians.

The Islamic rebel groups say they are only trying to help the needy but admit with some satisfaction that the tragedy could end up boosting their cause to wrest the bitterly disputed Himalayan region from mostly Hindu India.

Kashmir, a largely Muslim land, was a protectorate under British rule that remained nominally independent after the creation of India and Pakistan in a bloody partition of the subcontinent following independence in 1947.

Within a year, the two neighbors began a war that left India with two-thirds of the region and Muslim Pakistan controlling the remainder. Both now claim it in its entirety.

Within hours of the quake that devastated towns and villages on Saturday, separatists had started up what three days on remains the most visible aid operation in Indian Kashmir.

“No one else is giving the people as much as we are giving,” said Hidayat-Ullah Sheikh of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, a leading separatist alliance.

Meanwhile, another group of “Kashmiri separatists” was dispensing another sort of help earlier today: Terrorists kill 10 in Kashmir.

JAMMU: Terrorists killed 10 people at three places in Rajouri district of Jammu and Kashmir on Sunday night, showing no change of heart despite a devastating earthquake having hit the state on Saturday.

While terrorists massacred five members of two Hindu families in Rajnagar in the Budhal area, four Hindus were killed in Gabbar village and one Muslim in Kulhar village.

Police said terrorists barged into two homes in Rajnagar village in Budhal, about 200 km north of Jammu, around 11 p.m. on Sunday, took hold of the inmates and killed them with sharp-edged weapons.

Budhal is the worst-hit area in Saturday’s earthquake in which about 100 houses collapsed and 20 people sustained injuries.