|
|
|
| 30 August 2004 | Monday | 13 Rajab 1425 |
Nine killed in Kashmir
SRINAGAR, Aug 29: Six militants and three civilians were killed in a fresh bout of separatist violence in Kashmir, police said on Sunday.
The police backed by paramilitary forces shot dead a divisional commander of the region's dominant Hizbul Mujahedin rebel group in an overnight clash in Srinagar
, police said.
Police identified the slain commander as Javed Sheikh, saying he had been active since the start in 1989 of armed insurgency against Indian rule in Kashmir. Indian troops shot dead five more militants in three separate clashes in southern Poonch and Pulwama districts overnight, police said.
In other violence, police said two sisters they named only as Mehfooza, 22, and Ruhi, 25, were killed overnight in an explosion on the lawn of their house near Kulgam, 70 kilometres south of Srinagar.
A third sister was injured in the explosion, caused by an improvised explosive device. "It was lying under stones on their lawn. And once they started removing the stones it went off," a police spokesman said.
"It might have been concealed there by militants," he said. A 56-year-old Muslim civilian, meanwhile, was shot dead by suspected militants in southern Doda district overnight, police said.
The insurgency has escalated recently despite a dialogue launched in January between India and Pakistan aimed at ending their nearly six-decades-old dispute over the future of the Himalayan region. -AFP
|
|
|
|