SRINAGAR, Aug 28: Indian troops killed two militants in a hotel in Kashmir’s main city on Thursday after a night-long gunbattle which coincided with the arrival of Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee.

Three other people including a former state legislator died in the shootout, some five kilometres from the building where Vajpayee and state chief ministers were holding a meeting meant to highlight a return to normalcy in the Valley. A sixth was killed in grenade attack.

Jammu and Kashmir police chief Gopal Sharma claimed the charred body of a militant belonging to the guerilla group Lashkar-i-Taiba was found in the hotel. Police said overnight there were two gunmen and they were looking for the body of the second.

Among the dead from the hotel shootout in Srinagar were Javed Shah, the publisher of an Urdu-language newspaper and a former member of the state assembly, and his bodyguard. It was not clear if they were killed in crossfire or by the militants.

The body of another unidentified man was found in the hotel. A security spokesman said about six people had been rescued from the hotel during the night.

A member of a little-known militant group, Al-Mansoorian, called up newspapers in Srinagar late on Wednesday and said it had attempted a suicide attack on the government telegraph office next to the hotel.

Separately, suspected activists hurled a grenade at an Indian army patrol in southern Kashmir on Thursday, killing a passerby and wounding three other civilians, police said.

A landmine also went off in northern Kashmir.—Reuters