SRINAGAR, May 29 (2004):Militants slammed a grenade on Saturday into the heavily-guarded home of Kashmir's chief priest, who is involved in talks with the Indian government, hours after wounding a relative of his, police said. The rebels also shot dead a man, his wife and three-year-old son overnight in a renewed burst of violence in the Himalayan territory at the heart of decades of tension between India and Pakistan. The dead man was a member of the Iikhwan, a pro-India militant group helping security forces fight...

SRINAGAR, May 29 (2004): Suspected Muslim rebels shot dead three members of a family including a three-year-old boy and wounded a relative of Kashmir's chief priest involved in talks with Indian government, police said on Saturday. A Pakistan-based militant group Al-Umar Mujahideen claimed responsibility for Saturday's attack in the main city Srinagar in which separatist leader Moulvi Mushtaq Ahmad was wounded. Ahmad is also related to chief priest Moulvi Umar Farooq. Farooq and top leaders of the main separatist...

SRINAGAR, May 26 (2004): Four army soldiers were killed in an overnight gunbattle with members of a frontline rebel group in Indian Kashmir, police said on Wednesday. The clash between the army and Hizbul Mujahideen militants came after a senior security official said Hizbul was likely to launch more revenge attacks in Kashmir after the group claimed responsibility for a bomb attack that killed 29 people on Sunday. A police spokesman said the clash began when militants hiding in a house hurled grenades and sprayed...

SRINAGAR, May 25 (2004):Soldiers will stage street plays across disputed Kashmir to show the public ways of reducing fatalities during militant grenade and bomb attacks, the army said on Tuesday. Rebel violence in the war-torn region has declined since India and Pakistan began a peace process last year. But a series of grenade and bomb attacks during campaigning for India's national elections on May 10 has disrupted the peace. Muslim guerrillas, fighting against Indian rule in the region since 1989, are avoiding gun...

NEW DELHI, May 20 (2004):Prime minister-elect Manmohan Singh vowed on Thursday he would place top priority on carrying forward a nascent peace process with Pakistan and hold talks with all Kashmiri groups to resolve the vexed dispute. While the process would move forward in the direction charted by the outgoing government of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Islamabad, the conservative foreign policy of Singh's Congress party may slow it down, analysts said. "We seek the most friendly relations with our...

HUMHAMA, May 24 (2004): A frontline Kashmiri militant group is likely to launch more revenge attacks in the disputed region, a senior Indian official said on Monday, a day after 29 troops and their families were killed by a land mine. Sunday's attack on a highway that links the Kashmir Valley to the rest of India was the deadliest since New Delhi and Islamabad began a peace process last year to resolve their decades-old dispute. Hizbul Mujahideen, a leading rebel group fighting for Kashmir's merger with Pakistan,...

LOWERMUNDA, May 23 (2004): At least 28 people were killed in disputed Kashmir on Sunday when a bus packed with soldiers and their families ran over a landmine planted by separatist guerrillas, officials said. The attack, which came one day after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh took office, was the deadliest in Kashmir since India and Pakistan began a peace process late last year to resolve the dispute over the territory, the cause of two of their three wars. Torn limbs, blood-stained shoes and clothes and lunch-boxes...

RANGRETH, May 21 (2004): India's army chief said on Friday that more than 3,000 Muslim militants were ready to slip into Indian Kashmir from Pakistan. Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan came close to war two years ago over Indian charges that Pakistan supports rebels fighting New Delhi's rule in Jammu and Kashmir. But violence in the mountainous region has fallen since a thaw in ties last year. "As per our information, about 3,000 to 3,500 people in the various camps across the border are ready to infiltrate," Indian...

BATOTE, May 10 (2004): For years, there was only one word in the election vocabulary of Kashmiris living close to Muslim rebel strongholds in the Himalayan mountains: boycott. But on Monday, hundreds of war-weary people in the troubled region shrugged aside militant threats and voted in the last phase of a marathon election in the world's largest democracy. "We are not scared and there is no fear. I decided to vote this time because past election boycotts did not help," said 73-year retired government employee...

SRINAGAR, May 7 (2004): Six separatist guerrillas were killed in a fierce gunbattle with the Indian army in Kashmir on Friday, an army spokesman said. The gunbattle between the militants and soldiers broke out on Thursday evening in Baramulla district, north of Srinagar. "The encounter lasted for several hours and six unidentified militants were killed," army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Mukhtar Singh said. (For complete story write to admin@freepresskashmir.com)