SRINAGAR, Aug 16 (2006):Soldiers shot dead five suspected Muslim militants as they tried to cross into Indian Kashmir from Pakistan on Wednesday, an army spokesman said. The incursion attempt took place in the district of Kupwara, northwest of Srinagar, Kashmir's summer capital, a day after Pakistan said Indian troops had fired into their part of Kashmir, wounding two youths. Islamabad said the incident was the first violation of a ceasefire that has held since 2003. New Delhi denied Indian forces had opened...

SRINAGAR, Aug 12 (2006): Hundreds of people took to the streets of Kashmir on Saturday shouting anti-India slogans after troops killed two civilians believing they were separatist militants. More than 1,500 Kashmiri Muslims gathered near Dragmula township, 80 kilometres (50 miles) north of Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir's summer capital, after villagers found the bullet-ridden bodies of a woman and a man in a nearby forest. The Indian army said they regretted the incident and had ordered an inquiry into the...

JAMMU, Aug 11 (2006): Suspected Islamist militants stormed the house of a Hindu policeman in Indian Kashmir on Friday and shot his wife, son and daughter dead, police said. The family was targeted as the policeman worked in the anti-terrorism squad of the state police, they said. His daughter was six, and son, 14. The policeman was away when the attack took place in his village in Gool, about 130 km (80 miles) northeast of the state's winter capital, Jammu. No militant group claimed responsibility for the...

ISLAMABAD, Aug 10 (2006): Pakistani authorities have put the founder and former head of the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group under house arrest in the eastern city of Lahore, a spokesman for the Islamic charity he now runs said on Thursday. Hafiz Mohammad Saeed resigned almost five years ago from Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group suspected of involvement in the Indian rail blasts of July 11 that killed over 180 people, to become head of a charity called Jamaat-ud-Dawa, regarded as its sister organisation. The United States has...

SRINAGAR, Aug 9 (2006): Militant attacks across Indian Kashmir and a controversial decision to a recreate a revered ice stalagmite after it failed to appear naturally, cut the number of pilgrims visiting a Hindu shrine, officials said. Madan Mantoo, a spokesman for the two-month pilgrimage that ended on Wednesday, said less than 300,000 people visited the Amarnath Shrine, a cave deep in the Himalayas, against a record 400,000 pilgrims in 2005. As well as a series of deadly attacks on pilgrims and tourists by suspected...

SRINAGAR, Aug 3 (2006): Police in Indian Kashmir on Thursday offered 100,000 rupees ($2,141) in cash and a government job as reward to help catch militants behind a spate of grenade attacks in the revolt-torn region. More than three dozen civilians, including tourists, have been killed in over a 100 grenade blasts in Kashmir since January. Nearly 400 have been wounded. "Police will provide 100,000 rupees and a government job to anyone who arrests a grenade thrower or provides information leading to an arrest," said a...

JAMMU, Aug 2 (2006): Suspected militants threw a grenade near a bus stand in Indian Kashmir on Wednesday, wounding over a dozen people, police said, the latest in a spate of similar attacks in recent weeks blamed on Islamist guerrillas. The grenade was aimed at a federal police patrol but missed and exploded among people standing close to a crowded bus stand in Surankote town, 230 km (140 miles) north of Jammu, the winter capital of the restive Himalayan region. Five of the wounded were in serious condition, a police...

JAMMU, Aug 1 (2006): Militants gunned down four Indian police and border troops in two separate attacks in Kashmir's main city Srinagar on Tuesday, police said. In the first strike, militants shot dead two federal policemen near the historic Dal Lake in the city, summer capital of mainly Hindu India's only Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir. Later, militants killed two Border Security Force troops near a city hospital. Separatist guerrillas fighting Indian rule in Kashmir step up attacks during the summer...

JAMMU, Aug 1 (2006): The chief of Indian Kashmir's human rights body has resigned, saying he had been unable to stop rights abuses by security forces in the revolt-torn Himalayan region. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and police are stationed in India's only Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir to stamp out the separatist revolt by Muslim militants that has killed over 45,000 people since 1989. "In the wake of growing human rights violations in the state, the commission under my leadership has not been able...