SRINAGAR, July 31 (1994):Security forces ended a Kashmiri militant leader's protest against placement of security posts around Kashmir's holiest Moslem shrine by carrying him out of the complex on Sunday, witnesses said. They said security forces bodily removed Yasin Malik, the 30-year-old president of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), from the Hazratbal complex and took him to hospital. Malik, who suffers from a serious heart condition, entered the complex with his mother on Saturday night, shortly after...

SRINAGAR, July 29 (1994):Paramilitary Border Security Forces (BSF) surrounded Kashmir's holiest Islamic shrine on Friday after militant leaders were arrested attempting to enter it, police said. They said Yasin Malik, president of the pro-independence Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), and Shakeel Ahmed Baksh, head of the Islamic Students League, were detained when they tried to enter the shrine to begin a hunger strike. The two were planning the strike in protest against the stationing of permanent BSF posts...

SRINAGAR, July 28 (1994): An army court has sentenced two Indian soldiers to 12 years in jail for raping a Kashmiri woman, the Defence Ministry said in a statement on Thursday. It said the soldiers were given "a speedy 17-day trial" for raping a woman and molesting another in mid-June in Patan town in the northern Jammu and Kashmir state. "Both were also dismissed from service," the statement added. The Indian army rarely makes public details of courts martial against delinquent troops, but there have been frequent...

SRINAGAR, July 26 (1994):Troops shot dead seven Moslem separatist guerrillas when they tried to enter the northern state of Kashmir from neighbouring Pakistan, an army spokesman said on Tuesday. The seven were among a group of 30 to 40 militants who were fired at by the soldiers on the border in Kupwara district late Monday, the spokesman said. The others escaped. Troops recovered seven AK-47 rifles, two sniper rifles, 33 grenades, one universal machine gun, a grenade launcher and two radio sets from the site, the...

SRINAGAR, July 24 (1994): At least 19 people, mostly separatists rebels, have been killed in gun battles with government security forces in Kashmir, police said on Sunday. They said at least five separatists were killed on Saturday in an encounter with the paramilitary Border Security Force in Srinagar, summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir state. Elsewhere in the Kashmir Valley 14 people, half of them militants, were killed during gun battles with the security forces, police said. They said three bodies were recovered...

SRINAGAR, July 23 (1994):Paramilitary troopers burst into a home here Saturday and shot dead five Moslem militants in a basement hideout built under a kitchen, a spokesman of the border guards said. Whispering among themselves gave away the five armed guerrillas who had taken shelter inside the specially-built hideout during an anti-rebel crackdown in Srinagar's Sonurkul residential district, the official said. Four of those killed were guerrillas of the Hizbul Mujahedeen separatist group while the fifth was a...

SRINAGAR, July 19 (1994): A hardline Moslem Kashmiri militant group threatened on Tuesday to prevent thousands of Indian Hindus from making an annual pilgrimage to a cave in the rebellion-torn Himalayan region next month. The pro-Pakistan Harkat-ul-Ansar said in a statement it was determined to prevent the pilgrimage to the 13,500-foot (4,115-metre) Amarnath cave in southeast Kashmir, which is sacred to the Hindu god Siva. The group said it would prevent the pilgrimage, which starts in August when the snow has melted...

NEW DELHI, July 18 (1994):Police killed two Sikh militants they suspected of setting off a bomb in the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir that killed six people, the Press Trust of India (PTI) reported on Monday. A Moslem Kashmiri group was earlier reported to have claimed responsibility for Saturday's bomb, which exploded in Jammu, the predominantly Hindu winter capital of Jammu and Kashmir. PTI quoted senior policeman A.K. Suri as saying Santokh and Manvir Singh were killed trying to escape early on Monday after...

SRINAGAR, July 16 (1994): Suspected Kashmiri Moslem militants have shot dead a police officer tasked with arranging security for a Hindu pilgrimage that has been "banned" by a guerrilla group, press reports said Saturday. The killing followed state government assurances of tight security for the thousands of Hindus expected to travel next month to the holy Amarnath cave in the Kashmir mountains. Police inspector Shyamlal Pandita, a Hindu officer supervising security arrangements for the pilgrimage, was shot dead...

SRINAGAR, July 15 (1994): A former state legislator and a police officer were shot dead by suspected militants in two townships in Indian-ruled Kashmir on Friday, police said. Abdul Majeed Banday of India's Congress party, a former member of the Jammu and Kashmir state assembly, was shot at point-blank range in southern Shopian town. In nearby Anantnag, inspector Sham Lal Pandita was gunned down while on duty outside the district police lines. Police also said the paramilitary Border Security Force on Friday...