SRINAGAR, Sept 5: Six people including a pro-India politician were killed in occupied Kashmir, where a forest gun-battle between Mujahideen and Indian troops entered a fourth day on Friday, police said.

Stepped-up violence by Mujahideen has claimed 67 lives since Sunday, a day after Indian troops shot dead their senior commander Ghazi Baba in Srinagar.

Seven Mujahideen continued to hold 1,500 Indian troops at bay for fourth day as the army said it was not in a hurry to end its siege of the thick jungles of southern Kashmir.

Officials supervising the gunbattle in dense forests and ravines near the village of Ghatti, in the Kathua border region about 85 kilometres south of Jammu, rejected the criticism.

“Our strategy is to wear them out. We have no time-frame,” said occupied Kashmir Police Inspector-General P.L. Gupta on the fighting, which so far has led to the death of one policeman and injuries to seven others.

“Also, the encounter got prolonged as we did not want our boys to get killed by taking any hasty step in flushing out the rebels,” Gupta said.—AFP