SRINAGAR, June 30 (1999): Suspected Muslim separatists have gunned down at least 12 Hindu migrant labourers in Kashmir, a police spokesman said Wednesday. The incident followed the massacre late Monday of some 18 Moslem villagers by unidentified gunmen in the southern Kashmiri district of Poonch. The Hindu labourers were killed overnight Tuesday in the tiny village of Sandhu, 75 kilometers (47 miles) south of the Indian Kashmiri summer capital Srinagar. "We are investigating the incident. We suspect it could be the...

NEW DELHI, June 30 (1999):Government said on Wednesday there were still 800 to 900 infiltrators on its side of the control line with Pakistan in northern Kashmir because of reinforcements to replace those killed or wounded by Indian forces. "They take the bodies back, they take the wounded back and they get the reinforcements in. So the strength remains by and large the same," Colonel Bikram Singh told reporters. Singh said the army, after capturing two vital positions in the Drass sector this week, had pushed back...

SRINAGAR, June 30 (1999): Separatist violence in the northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir has increased since India began an offensive against infiltrators in the Kargil area, a senior police official said on Wednesday. "Since the commencement of operations in the Kargil area, the rest of the state has registered an increase in militant violence," said the official, who asked not to be identified. India began an air and ground offensive against what New Delhi says are mainly Pakistani guerrillas who infiltrated...

MUSHKOH, June 29 (1999): Flowers in Kashmir's Mushkoh valley are in full bloom this year but there are no children to honour an ancient custom. In Mushkoh, where temperatures dip to minus 40 degrees Celsius in winter, children offer the first flower of the season to their grandparents. This summer, guns boomed in Mushkoh and its 600-odd people fled their hamlet for the first time in their lives. Doors bolted, window panes broken and homes pockmarked by splinters of shells, Mushkoh has been through a summer of...

BATALIK, June 29 (1999): An Indian Air Force helicopter whirs in brilliant sunshine as powerful artillery guns take aim through a narrow valley at guerrillas perched on the barren Kashmir mountains. Moments later, a flash of fire erupts and guns begin booming, kicking up a cloud of dust on the steep slopes below the snow-capped ridge that marks the Line of Control with Pakistan. Somewhere down the valley, a crack team of commandos is acclimatising itself before the final assault on the guerrillas dug in in "sangars",...

JAMMU, June 29 (1999): Fifteen civilians, including four teenage girls, were killed and one was injured by gun-wielding militants in a district bordering Pakistan in the restive state of Kashmir, police said on Tuesday. Inspector-General of Police Kuldeep Khuda said the dead were victims of internal rivalry between two groups of a militant outfit in the Poonch district's Surankote area, 256 km (158 miles) north of Jammu, the state's winter capital. The violence was not linked to the military offensive against...

NEW DELHI, June 29 (1999): Media images of Indian soldiers battling in the harsh terrain of Kashmir's mountains have spawned an outpouring of patriotic emotions and a host of enterprising schemes to voice support. Thousands of Indians have joined solidarity marches across the country to lend moral support to the troops fighting infiltrators who have dug themselves in close to the ceasefire line with arch-foe Pakistan. A throng, from three-year-olds to eighty-year-olds, descended on the capital's central vista this...

NEW DELHI, June 29 (1999): New Delhi said on Tuesday it had recaptured two enemy positions and cut off vital supply lines to hundreds of infiltrators in Kashmir as Pakistan's Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif cut short a visit to China to deal with the crisis. A flurry of weekend diplomacy appeared to have fanned tensions rather than talk of peace between the nuclear neighbours, and the United States said on Tuesday it was unwilling to mediate in the current confrontation. A Pakistan military spokesman said 500 Indian...

SRINAGAR, June 29 (1999): The Indian air force Tuesday claimed success in night-time pounding of entrenched Moslem guerrillas in the mountains of Kashmir, while the army said it had recaptured two key peaks. The renewed fighting came as diplomatic efforts to end the seven- week-old conflict appeared to be stalled and Pakistani Premier Nawaz Sharif cut short a visit to China to return to Pakistan. Group Captain D.N. Ganesh said in New Delhi that "effective" air strikes were carried out in the northern Drass, Batalik...

SRINAGAR, June 29 (1999): The Indian air force Tuesday claimed success in night pounding of entrenched Moslem guerrillas in Kashmir, as troops continued a heavy artillery assault on strategic peaks. Indian bombers carried out post-midnight strikes to keep pressure on guerrillas on the summit of the 15,140-foot (4,590-metre) Tiger Hills in northern Indian Kashmir, officials said. The air strikes were followed by Indian troops using 155mm Bofors guns to pound what India claims are Pakistani soldiers and Moslem...