June 14, 2003	Saturday	Rabi-us-Sani 13, 1424

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SRINAGAR, June 13: Nine people, including three members of a family and two Indian soldiers, were killed in violence in occupied Kashmir, police said on Friday.

A police spokesman said an army vehicle ran over a landmine in the village of Wangam, near Kokernag, 70 kilometers south of Srinagar.

“The mine explosion ripped through the army vehicle killing two soldiers on the spot and injuring four others seriously,” the spokesman said.

Army reinforcements reached the scene and removed the dead and the injured.

Indian soldiers, backed by police and paramilitary forces, later launched a manhunt for the Kashmiris, but no one was immediately arrested.

Hizbul Mujahideen and Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen jointly claimed responsibility for the attack, local news agency Current News Service said.

Mujahideen, meanwhile, barged into the house of Ali Mohammed Mir in the village of Manidora in northern Kupwara district and fired indiscriminately, killing three people and injuring Mir, a police spokesman said.

Among the dead were Mir’s 60-year-old mother, 25-year-old wife and a close male relative, police said.

In the same district, Indian troops killed two people, one of them a Pakistani national, in two separate encounters, police said.

Police said suspected rebels shot dead two Muslims in the southern district of Doda overnight after barging into their houses.—AFP