Kashmir militants killed in mosque shootout

By staff and wire reports

SRINAGAR, Kashmir (CNN) -- Six Islamic militants holed up in a mosque since Sunday have been killed in a gunfight, say police in Indian-administered Kashmir.

Officials said the Tuesday morning shootout came at the end of a 36-hour operation in which the troops cordoned off the area around the mosque in the town of Shangus, about 60 km (37 miles) south of Srinagar.

Working with the troops, who are specially trained national security guard commandos, police entered the mosque at daybreak and the shooting began, authorities said.

Following the gun battle, police said, they found the bodies of the six militants and six AK-47 rifles.

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"Three more militants were killed in the overnight operation, we lost a soldier and two others were injured in the encounter," an army spokesman said.

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Residents said the army sent community leaders to the mosque to ask the rebels to surrender but they had refused.

Police said they had intended to wait out the 36-hour siege in the hope of avoiding causing damage to the mosque.

Past incidents involving police and militants holed up inside houses of worship, in which the mosques or shrines were damaged, have sparked angry protests by local residents.

In a similar incident in Indian Kashmir last month, militants fled from a mosque under cover of darkness after security forces lifted a siege out of respect for the sanctity of the place of worship.

Rising violence

Violence has surged across the Himalayan state since the Indian government called off its six-month-old ceasefire against the rebels last month.

Nearly 200 people, most of them separatist guerrillas, have been killed since then.

Officials say more than 30,000 people have been killed in separatist violence since the revolt began at the end of 1989 in Jammu and Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state.

On Friday at least four women were killed and 50 others wounded in a grenade blast at one of the disputed territory's holiest shrines, the Charar-i-Sharif mosque, 21 miles (34 km) from Srinagar.

That attack came just four days after a grenade attack on a crowded street in Srinagar killed four people.

Kashmir talks

The latest violence comes as India and Pakistan try to hold their first peace talks since they almost came to the brink of war two years ago, when both sides conducted nuclear tests.

India has called off a six-month-old suspension of hostilities against guerrillas in May and invited the military leader of Pakistan, General Pervez Musharraf, to New Delhi for talks on Kashmir.

Musharraf has accepted the invitation but no date has yet been set for the talks. Officials say these could take place in late June or July.

India and Pakistan have fought two wars over control of Kashmir since they won independence from Britain in 1947.

India accuses its neighbor of sponsoring the insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir, but Pakistan says it provides only moral support to the Kashmiri people's struggle for self-determination.