JAMMU, Aug 31 (1994): More than 6O people died overnight in a single district of the Indian state of Kashmir due to gastroenteritis and stomach-related diseases, police here said Wednesday. Some 300 people have been admitted to hospitals in the southern district of Doda since Tuesday, they said, following a rash of stomach ailments. The patients were complaining of abdominal pain and were dehydrated. Most of the deaths were reported from remote villages with poor access to health centres, police added. The...

SRINAGAR, Aug 30 (1994): Journalists on Tuesday demanded a judicial investigation into the murder of an newspaperman who claimed an army officer had threatened his life unless he stopped reporting on troop movements in Kashmir. Thousands of people attended the funeral on Tuesday of 35-year-old Gulam Muhammad Lone and his seven-year-old son who were shot dead by masked gunmen on Monday night in their house in the town of Kangan near Kashmir's summer capital Srinagar. Lone was a newspaper salesman who also reported in...

SRINAGAR, Aug 29 (1994):troops shot dead 13 Moslem militants and two civilians were killed in separate incidents in a renewed flare-up of separatist violence in Kashmir, police and army officials said Monday. The guerrillas deaths sparked a protest strike near the site of a gunbattle between the soldiers and the Kashmiri separatists, police said in Srinagar, the turbulent state's summer capital. Army troops raided the village of Shirapur in northern Baramulla district on Sunday to flush out Moslem guerrillas...

SRINAGAR, Aug 25 (1994): A bomb on a school bus killed eight people, most of them children, and injured 29 others on Thursday in a Hindu-majority region of Jammu and Kashmir state, police said. No one claimed responsibility for the bomb, but authorities suspected Sikh extremists from neighbouring Punjab state or Kashmir separatists fighting against New Delhi's rule of Jammu and Kashmir, the only Indian state with a Moslem-majority in the mainly Hindu nation. The bombing occurred about 12 km (seven miles) south of...

SRINAGAR, Aug 24 (1994): The Indian army shot dead 12 Moslem separatists after raiding a village hide-out in the troubled state of Kashmir, a defence ministry spokesman said on Wednesday. The militants were killed during a six-hour gunbattle that erupted when soldiers surrounded Galwanpura village, nearly 25 kilometers (15 miles) east of Srinagar, overnight Tuesday. The spokesman said the guerrillas were planning to attack a nearby army camp when the troops surprised them. The army seized six AK-47 assault rifles,...

WASHINGTON, Aug 23 (1994): Human rights abuses in Kashmir have escalated in recent months, partly because international pressure on New Delhi to halt the violations has eased, a human rights group said Friday. "India seems to have been largely successful in a campaign to counter international criticism of its human rights record in Kashmir, despite the fact that it has done little to end the abuses," Human Rights Watch/Asia said in a report on Kashmir. Kashmir straddles India and Pakistan and the two sides have fought...

SRINAGAR, Aug 22 (1994):Troops shot dead 12 Moslem separatists when they sneaked into the Indian side of Kashmir from the Pakistani-administered area, Indian authorities said on Monday. They said the militants were killed on Sunday in the Kupwara district of Jammu and Kashmir, the only Moslem majority state in mostly Hindu India. Another militant was killed in the neighbouring Baramulla district, they said. Police and hospital sources say more than 16,000 people have died in the valley since a major rebellion...

NEW DELHI, Aug 20 (1994): At least 32 people, including 21 Moslem separatists, have been killed in gun battles with government security forces in Kashmir since Friday, the Press Trust of India (PTI) said on Saturday. PTI said the Indian army and para military forces captured 22 militants. A government spokesman said 10 militants were killed in separate gun battles with the security forces in Doda district of Jammu and Badgam in central Kashmir. PTI quoted a defence ministry spokesman as saying that five separatists...

SRINAGAR, Aug 16 (1994):Militants in Kashmir tossed grenades at a convoy of Hindu pilgrims on Tuesday, largely missing their intended targets but slightly injuring two policemen, police said. They said the attack in the state's Anantnag district was the first such incident following several warnings by hardline militants against an annual pilgrimage to Amarnath, site of a temple to the Hindu god Shiva. Kashmir police chief Manohar Nath Sabharwal told a news conference that some 20,000 pilgrims had gathered in the...

NEW DELHI, Aug 15 (1994): Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao said on Monday that India would pursue its fight against armed militants in Kashmir until Pakistan stopped meddling in the strife-torn northern region. In a speech marking India's 47th independence anniversary, Rao pledged to hold elections in the troubled Kashmir valley but did not say when. "We say we will not rest until you (Pakistan) stop your interference," Rao said in a speech from New Delhi's Red Fort carried on state television. "We want to tell...