Seven killed in Kashmir explosion, gunbattles

November 9, 2000
Web posted at: 6:42 AM HKT (2242 GMT)

SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) -- Seven people including four guerrillas were killed on Wednesday in an explosion and gunbattles in India's strife-torn Kashmir.

The deaths coincided with an official claiming a sharp rise in the number of separatists killed this year.

Indian security forces shot dead four foreign mercenaries of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba at Dofall in Poonch district 480 km (295 miles) southwest of Srinagar, the Jammu and Kashmir state's summer capital, police said.

Three Indian security force members were wounded in the gunbattle.

Two more militants were killed in a gunbattle with security forces in the Poonch area, police said.

Earlier on Wednesday one Indian soldier was killed and five wounded when suspected separatist guerrillas set off a landmine in the Pawan forests of Kupwara district 85 km (50 miles) northwest of Srinagar, police said.

Separatist violence has surged across Kashmir after a frontline militant group called off a ceasefire in August, citing India's refusal to involve Pakistan in talks to resolve the Kashmir dispute.

India, which controls 45 percent of the Kashmir region, accuses Pakistan of arming and training Kashmiri separatists and bringing in Islamic mercenaries from elsewhere, a charge Islamabad denies.

Pakistan rules over a third of Kashmir and China the rest.

Nearly a dozen militant groups are fighting New Delhi's rule in Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir in a revolt more than a decade old that is estimated to have killed more than 30,000 people.

Steep rise claimed in deaths of militants

A government spokesman said in Jammu, the state's winter capital, that as many as 1,306 militants including 363 foreign mercenaries have been killed so far this year in stepped-up anti-militancy operations in the state, the highest in the past seven years.

According to the spokesman, 889 separatists were killed in the same period last year.

"The killing of militants has registered about 47 percent increase this year over the last year," he said.

He said greater success has been achieved in these operations in the past three months when security forces and police had killed 470 separatists.

October alone accounted for 183 militants, the highest in a single month during the past decade of armed rebellion, he said.

"This is mainly due to an increased flow of specific information about militants' movements, mostly given by locals who are fed up with violence," the spokesman said.

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