WASHINGTON, March 31 (1996): Four US representatives urged Secretary of State Warren Christopher to call for an investigation into the death of a prominent human rights activist in Kashmir, a Kashmiri group said. Indiana Republican Dan Burton, California Republican Dana Rohrabacher, New York Democrat Donald Payne and Virginia Democrat James Moran said the US ambassador to India should raise the death with the government there and ask India to "exercise restraint and guarantee the safety of all the...

ISLAMABAD, March 31 (1996): Pakistan's parliament condemned on Sunday what it called a massacre of Kashmiri "freedom-fighters" by Indian forces in the New Delhi-ruled part of the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir. The unanimous lower house resolution was in response to the killing of 24 separatist guerrillas by Indian police on Saturday near Kashmir's holiest shrine. The 217-member National Assembly urged Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's government to raise...

Sheikh Mushtaq SRINAGAR, March 30 (1996): At least 21 separatist guerrillas were killed on Saturday in a gunbattle between police and militants who recently vacated Kashmir's holiest shrine, police said. "There was heavy exchange of fire between the Jammu and Kashmir police and the militants who were under house arrest," a top police official told Reuters. "We have recovered dead bodies of 21 militants, including that of Shabbir Siddiqui," said Niaz Mehmood, police chief of Srinagar, the...

WASHINGTON, March 29 (1996): The United States on Friday condemned the killing of Kashmiri human rights activist Jalil Andrabi and called on India to conduct a "full and transparent investigation". A statement issued by the State Department also called on India to protect others engaged in human rights work. Andrabi, chairman of the Kashmir Commission of Jurists, was abducted by unidentified gunmen on March 9 and his body was later found in a river. His wife...

NEW DELHI, March 29 (1996): India on Friday denied Pakistan's charge that a prominent Kashmiri human rights activist was killed while in official custody in the troubled Himalayan region. A government spokesman accused Islamabad of trying to gain "propaganda mileage" from the death of Jalil Andrabi, chairman of the Kashmir Commission of Jurists whose body was fished out of the Jhelum River in Srinagar on Wednesday. Andrabi's widow blamed the army for killing her husband, but the army denied Andrabi had been in their...

Sheikh Mushtaq SRINAGAR, March 28 (1996): A prominent Kashmiri lawyer and human rights activist whose body was fished out of a river on Wednesday was buried on Thursday in a heavily attended ceremony in the troubled Himalayan valley, witnesses said. Around 2,000 Kashmiris chanting anti-Indian, pro-freedom and pro-Moslem slogans joined in the funeral procession of Jalil Andrabi, chairman of the Kashmir Commission of Jurists. Andrabi was abducted by unidentified gunmen on March 8 when he was...

Sheikh Mushtaq SRINAGAR, March 27 (1996): Indian police fired shots in the air on Wednesday to disperse an angry crowd carrying the body of a prominent Kashmiri human rights activist pulled out of a river, witnesses said. Jalil Andrabi, chairman of the Kashmir Commission of Jurists, a local human rights organisation, was abducted by unidentified gunmen on March 9. The lawyer's body was fished out of the Jhelum River in Srinagar, the...

SRINAGAR, March 27 (1996): Armed separatists have left Kashmir's holiest shrine in a peaceful end to a two-day standoff, sparing Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao embarrassment before general elections starting next month. Seventeen members of a faction of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) walked out of Hazratbal shrine late on Tuesday after reaching an agreement with authorities, said a senior government official who asked not to be identified. He...

SRINAGAR, March 27 (1996): Police returned to Kashmir's holiest mosque on Wednesday and began erecting new sandbagged bunkers, a day after Moslem militants holed up inside surrendered their weapons. Kashmiri policemen strengthened positions they had held outside the Hazratbal mosque before the three-day standoff with some 20 heavily-armed militants began on Sunday, government officials said. "The police have taken up their old bunkers and are setting up new...

Sheikh Mushtaq SRINAGAR, March 26 (1996): Armed separatists staked out in Kashmir's holiest shrine on Tuesday released the bodies of eight comrades killed in a gunbattle, and authorities said they expected a quick end to the two-day standoff. Police superintendent Niaz Mehmood told Reuters in Srinagar, summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir state, that the bodies of four Kashmiri militants who died at Hazratbal shrine on Sunday were handed over to government forces on Tuesday morning. The...