SRINAGAR, May 29 (1995): Eighteen separatist guerrillas and six civilians died in separate gunbattles overnight in this northern Indian state of Kashmir, police said here Monday. Army soldiers gunned down six Moslem insurgents after they crossed over to the Indian zone of Kashmir early Monday from the Pakistan-administered part of the divided Himalayan state, an official spokesman here said. Police said five guerrillas died in an internecine clash late Sunday night in the district of Anantnag, 55 kilometres (33 miles)...

MUZAFFARABAD, May 27 (1995):Troops killed two residents on the border of the Pakistani-controlled section of Kashmir and injured two others Saturday, state officials here said. The Indians allegedly opened fire on civilians in the Neelum valley in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, the officials said. According to the officials five people have died in the valley over the last 10 days in shooting by Indian soldiers. On Thursday the official Pakistani media said six people were killed in a week by Indian troops in...

SRINAGAR, May 27 (1995): Kashmiri journalists stormed out of a press conference called by India's poll panel chief here on Saturday after he accused the local BBC correspondent of misreporting the Moslem militancy. Some 50 reporters, gathered at a government guest house, got into a heated argument with Chief Election Commissioner T.N. Seshan after he ordered the BBC reporter, Yusuf Jameel, to get out. Seshan, who arrived here from New Delhi to assess whether legislative elections could be held in Kashmir, alleged that...

SRINAGAR, May 26 (1995): Leaders of a Kashmiri coalition opposing state assembly elections planned by Indian Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao in July defied security cordons and roadblocks on Friday to launch a campaign against the polls. Travelling icognito, two leaders of the All-Party Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference, slipped through security cordons around the southern town of Pulwama, 30 kms (19 miles) from Srinagar, to hold a public meeting at the town's largest mosque. They launched their anti-poll campaign as...

SRINAGAR, May 26 (1995): A hunted guerrilla leader accused by India of helping to gut a Kashmiri shrine this month has blamed the army for the fire and vowed to press his fight against New Delhi's rule over the region. "It is absolutely nonsense to say that we had laid explosives around the shrine and threatened to blow it up," Mast Gul told reporters at a militant hideout outside Srinagar after nightfall on Thursday. Gul is a self-styled major who appeared regularly on television and in newspaper photographs during a...

SRINAGAR, May 25 (1995):Guerrillas shot dead three Hindu villagers in the Indian state of Kashmir in an attack aimed at fuelling clashes between the two communities, the police said Thursday. Seven others, including four Moslems, were injured in the firing at a village some 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Jammu, the winter capital of the northern state, a police spokesman said here. "The attack was obviously aimed at fomenting Hindu-Moslem clashes," the spokesman said. "We have rushed reinforcements to the place to...

SRINAGAR, May 23 (1995): Security forces stayed on alert as the Kashmir valley's main city returned to normal on Tuesday after 12 days of violence in the wake of the destruction of a revered shrine. Curfews have been imposed on the Himalayan region intermittently since the shrine to Kashmir's patron saint burnt down early in May, sparking unrest in largely Hindu India's only Moslem-majority state. Leaders of the All-Party Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference, which demands self-determination for Kashmir, said they were...

WASHINGTON, May 23 (1995): U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher on Tuesday backed India's call for dialogue with Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir dispute but said Delhi's recipe of elections in the region was not the whole answer. The United States has in the past offered to mediate in the dispute -- most recently when President Bill Clinton received Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto last month -- provided both countries sought its help. Pakistan has done so but India opposes what it calls...

SRINAGAR, May 22 (1995):Authorities tightened security in Kashmir on Monday ahead of a planned protest by separatists in the ruined town of Charar-e-Sharief where destrcution of a Moslem shrine has sparked wide unrest. Most shops and businesses in Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir state, stayed shut for the 12th straight day in protest against the destruction of the 15th-century wooden shrine to Kashmir's patron saint. The Indian army, fighting a five-year separatist insurgency in Kashmir which has...

SRINAGAR, May 21 (1995):- More than 5,000 people marched in Kashmir's capital Srinagar on Sunday to condemn the destruction of a 15th-century shrine after Indian officials lifted a curfew, police said. The curfew was first imposed in the Kashmir valley following the destruction of the shrine to the region's patron saint during clashes between Indian forces and Moslem separatists on May 11, triggering widespread unrest. The All-Party Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference (APHC), a coalition of 30 political and cultural groups,...