NEW DELHI, Aug 31 (1988): Two civilians were killed and 30 injured after Pakistani gunners shelled frontier areas of the Indian-administered zone of Kashmir, the Press Trust of India reported Monday. The news agency said Pakistani mortar and artillery fire targetted Indian military positions across the Line of Control -- the de facto border dividing the Himalayan state -- late Sunday night. The casualties were passengers in a truck hit by Pakistani shells in Kargil district. An army spokesman said the Indian...

NEW DELHI, Aug 31 (1998): A group of soldiers have been arrested on charges of gang raping a pregnant woman over the weekend in the northern state of Kashmir, the United News of India (UNI) reported Monday. A defence ministry spokesman said the soldiers allegedly abducted the woman and then raped her in the northern Kashmiri district of Baramulla on Saturday. He did not specify how many soldiers were involved. "Army authorities have taken a serious note of the alleged abduction and rape of the pregnant woman, by...

NEW DELHI, Aug 30 (1998):Sixty percent of Moslem separatists in the strife-torn Indian state of Kashmir are Afghans or Pakistanis, the Indian army chief said Sunday. General V.P. Malik said in Gazigund town, some 80 kilometers (50 miles) from Kashmir's summer capital Srinagar, that the Afghan and Pakistani mercenaries were engaged in a "proxy war" against India. He did not give the total number of Moslem separatist guerrillas in Kashmir, which is contested by India and Pakistan. Indian officials say a large number...

SRINAGAR, Aug 28 (1998): Unidentified militants killed four members of a family in the rebellion-torn Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir on Friday, police said. "Militants entered the house of Gama Gujjar and shot dead his three sons at Narkote village," a police spokesman said. "In the shoot-out one lady was injured who later succumbed to her injuries." The woman was the wife of one of the brothers. Narkote village lies in the Himalayan region's Udhampur district, 232 km (145 miles) southeast of Srinagar, the...

ISLAMABAD, Aug 27 (1998): Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will meet Indian counterpart Atal Behari Vajpayee in Durban to call for resuming talks on the Kashmir dispute, officials said Thursday. Sharif leaves here early next week for South Africa to attend the 12th Non-Aligned Movement summit conference. He will meet Vajpayee on the sidelines of the conference, the officials told the domestic news agency APP. Sharif will urge early resumption of talks on Kashmir, they said. Pakistan and India have fought...

SRINAGAR, Aug 21 (1998): One Indian soldier was killed and two civilians were wounded when Pakistani troops fired across the Kashmiri border, police said on Friday. "One security force jawan (soldier) was killed due to Pak (Pakistani) firing in the Hiranagar sector on Thursday," a police statement said. Hiranagar lies in the district of Kathua, 45 kilometres (28 miles) from Jammu, the winter capital of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. The statement said Pakistani firing at Kargil injured two civilians. The...

SRINAGAR, Aug 20 (1998): Police shot dead a protester and injured four others in Kashmir during a rally on Thursday in protest at the death of a suspected Moslem rebel in army custody, witnesses said. Police opened fire at some 300 men and women staging a noisy protest in the township of Parang, some 40 kilometres (24 miles) from Srinagar, the witnesses said. Officials said they were protesting at the alleged murder of a suspected Moslem separatist guerrilla following his arrest by Indian soldiers. The protesters...

MUZAFFARABAD, Aug 18 (1998): Eight people were killed in Kashmir on Tuesday as Indian troops fired across a military control line and separatist militants launched attacks on the Indian side of the strife-torn region, officials said. Officials in Pakistan's Muzaffarabad said Indian troops fired machine guns across the so-called line-of-control, killing two men in the Pakistan-ruled part of the Himalayan territory. They said the firing targeted Athmuqam in Pakistan-ruled Kashmir's Neelum valley, the scene of heavy...

SRINAGAR, Aug 17 (1998): Separatist violence killed 14 people in the troubled Indian state of Kashmir, including 10 Moslem guerrillas, the police said Monday. The militants were gunned down in the northern Kashmir district of Kupwara overnight Sunday after the soldiers cordoned off Kalaroos village close to the Pakistan border. "All the dead were foreigners," a police spokesman said in this summer capital of Kashmir. "The troops seized huge quantities of arms and ammunition from them." Three houses and four shops...

SRINAGAR, Aug 14 (1998): The chief minister of India's troubled Jammu and Kashmir state said on Friday the status of Kashmir was well settled five decades ago, and Pakistan had no grounds to try to change that status. "Pakistan is trumpeting on Kashmir, forgetting that the people of Jammu and Kashmir had discarded the two-nation theory and chosen to join secular India five deades ago," Farooq Abdullah said in a message to the people of his state on the eve of India's Independence Day. India celebrates its 51st...