SRINAGAR, Dec 8: Sixteen people, including eight militants, died in Indian-occupied Kashmir, where a four-day ceasefire by a militant group ended on Sunday, police said.
Nine security personnel, including three officers, were also injured when militants fired four rifle-grenades at a security camp in the heart of Srinagar.
The camp is in a stadium which is the main venue for official state functions such as Independence Day and Republic Day celebrations.
The attack happened at around 7:00 pm, about the time a unilateral four-day ceasefire called by the Lashkar-i-Taiba group came to an end.
Lashkar had called for the truce between December 5 and 8 to enable Muslims in the region, plagued by separatist-linked violence, to celebrate Eid-ul-Fitr peacefully.
In another incident, police said suspected militants, masked and armed with pistols and grenades, forced their way into a house and shot dead a man, Sajjad Dar, in the village of Arigam, near Bandipora township, 60 kilometres north of here.
His aunt, Zia Begum, who saw the shooting, died of a heart attack.
Police said Dar had been working for the counter-insurgency police.
Another person, Shahzada Begum, who was abducted by suspected rebels on November 25, was shot dead late Saturday in the forests of Kulgam in southern Anantnag district, police said.
In the same district suspected rebels shot dead a government employee.
Police said a motive for the two killings was not known.
On Sunday, gunmen killed a three-wheel cab driver Ali Mohammed in Srinagar for being an alleged security force informer, police said.
Two more civilians were killed by gunmen in the southern neighbouring districts of Udhampur and Poonch, police said, adding investigations had been launched into the killings.
In Poonch and Doda districts of Kashmir Indian troops gunned down five Muslim militants in two separate encounters, police said Sunday.
In the northern Kashmir district of Baramulla three militants and an Indian army soldier were killed in two separate overnight gunbattles.—AFP