SRINAGAR, March 13: Militants disguised as cricketers killed five paramilitary police in an ambush in the main city of Indian-held Kashmir on Wednesday, officials said, in the deadliest attack for nearly five years.

Two gunmen from the local Hizbul Mujahideen group, which claimed the attack, were shot dead after the assault on a police compound housing a barracks, school and playing field, the officials said.

A senior police officer said the extremists from the group pretended to be joining children for a game of cricket before taking out automatic weapons from a bag and throwing a grenade.

“They came into the compound carrying cricket gear in which they hid their weapons. We recovered weapons and grenades from their bags later,” Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) spokesman Sudhir Kumar said.

Four civilians and four CRPF soldiers were injured in the Srinagar attack, police said.

The Kashmir News Service, a Srinagar-based news agency, reported it received a call from a Hizbul Mujahideen spokesman who claimed the “guerilla attack” and warned that more would follow.

Indian Home Secretary R.K. Singh said in New Delhi the dead gunmen appeared “not local but from across the border” in Pakistan and added two other militants who were not involved in the attack might still be at large in Srinagar.

Wednesday’s deaths marked the deadliest single day for Indian forces since July 2008 when a landmine killed nine soldiers on a bus on the outskirts of Srinagar.

The attack comes as a 23-year freedom movement has been on the wane. Violence across the region has been at its lowest since the Kashmir struggle against Indian rule began in 1989.

But tensions have mounted since the execution last month of a Kashmiri separatist over a deadly 2001 attack on the national parliament in New Delhi.

Mohammed Afzal Guru was convicted over the attack, but he retained wide support in held Kashmir where many said he had not got a fair trial.

Much of the region has since been under repeated curfews while protests and strikes have disrupted daily life.

Police said a 24-year-old man, Altaf Ahmed Wani, was shot dead on Wednesday by paramilitary forces when they opened fire to stop people hurling stones at their armoured vehicle.

But several bystanders who said they witnessed the killing contested the account and said Wani was shot dead as he crossed a road and there was no stone-throwing.—Agencies