Twelve killed in militant attacks in Indian Kashmir

SRINAGAR, India (Reuters) – Twelve people, including a
child and three soldiers, were killed and 13 were wounded in
separate attacks by suspected Muslim militants across Indian
Kashmir, security officials said on Saturday.

The attacks came days after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh assured Kashmiri separatists that New Delhi would cut
troop levels in the region if rebel violence and guerrilla
incursions from Pakistan ceased.

Three soldiers were killed and five wounded on Saturday
when militants ambushed an army convoy south of Srinagar, Jammu
and Kashmir state’s summer capital, an army spokesman said.

“The army convoy came under heavy gunfire from a house. The

area has been cordoned off and troops are searching the
area,” army spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel V.K. Batra said.

A banned hardline militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, called a

local news service and claimed responsibility for the
attack.

On Friday night, suspected militants attacked the families
of two policemen with grenades and automatic weapons in
Udhampur district, killing six people and wounding eight.

“Those killed were in their teens besides a four-year-old
child,” a police official said in Jammu, the winter capital.

In another incident in the same district, militants killed
three Hindu shepherds by slitting their throats, police said.

Police blame separatist guerrillas for the killings but no
militants group has claimed responsibility so far.

Authorities say rebel incursions from Pakistan and violence

continue in the Himalayan region despite a slow-moving
peace process between India and Pakistan, which have fought two
wars over the region.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed in Jammu and
Kashmir, mainly Hindu India’s only Muslim-majority state, since
a revolt broke out in 1989. India says Pakistan aids Muslim
militants in the region, a charge Islamabad denies.

(Additional reporting by Ashok Pahalwan in Jammu)