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At Least 25 Dead In Attacks In Kashmir
SRINAGAR, Feb 10 (News Agencies) - Attackers Saturday are said to have carried out two bloody assaults in Kashmir, a daring raid on a police station and allegedly upon a village, which left at least 25 people dead, Indian officials said.
Ten people, eight police and two attackers, died when a squad attacked the main police control center for Kashmir in the city of Srinagar overnight, police said.
In a second attack, Indian military officials said attackers burned down the houses of three suspected army informers in a village northwest of Jammu, killing 15 people, including three women and seven children.
Indian commandos are reported to have re-gained control of the Srinagar police complex shortly after dawn Saturday.
Troops launched a final all-out assault on a building where several gunmen had been holed up since the attackers fought their way into the large complex nearly 12 hours earlier.
Kashmir police chief Ashok Bhan said eight police and two attackers had been confirmed dead.
The Pakistan-based Laskher-e-Taiba and the Alumar Mujahideen claimed responsibility for the attack on the police station.
The squad of fighters approached the police station's front gate at around 7:10 pm (1340 GMT) on Friday in a white Ambassador taxi and opened fire with grenades and automatic weapons.
Some of the attackers then managed to get inside the sprawling complex and intense exchanges of gunfire could be heard for more than one hour.
Troops using bulletproof vehicles moved into the complex late on Friday night to hunt for the gunmen, and at around 5:00 am (0000 GMT) Saturday around 50 policemen were escorted to safety.
The soldiers waited for the first rays of dawn before launching a final attack on a building adjacent to the main compound where the attackers had been hiding, police sources said.
Riaz Ahmed, a spokesman for the Alumar, said six Kashmiri fighters launched the attack. He said one was killed but five escaped.
A spokesman for the Laskher-e-Taiba said: "This operation is against the special operation group of the police who have unleashed ex-judicial killings of innocent Kashmiris."
The second attack happened at 3:00 a.m. (2130 GMT Friday) in the village of Chalwalkote, around 200 kilometers (124 miles) northwest of the Kashmiri winter capital Jammu, Brigadier General P.C. Das said.
"Militants barged into three houses in Chalwalkote village and shot eight adults living in those houses at point-blank range so that no one would be able to raise an alarm," said Das.
"Then they doused the huts with kerosene and set them ablaze," said Das, adding that seven children were inside the houses.
According to the Indian army, the attackers targeted the three families because they had men working on the village defense committee.
The government has set up around 500 village defense committees in Indian-held Kashmir. Members of the committees are given rifles and ammunition to defend their communities from attacks by the opposition.
"The militants may have also thought that the men were army informers simply because they were on the committee," added Das.
The high-profile attacks come after the Indian government on January 23rd extended its unilateral ceasefire in the region for another month.
They follow several other high-profile attacks since the Indian government suspended counter-insurgency operations in Kashmir on November 27th.
In December attackers gunned down three people inside the Red Fort in New Delhi, while in January three policeman and two civilians died in a suicide attack on Srinagar airport.
The Himalayan state of Kashmir is divided into Indian and Pakistani-held zones. India blames Pakistan for fueling a Muslim insurgency in Indian-held Kashmir in a conflict that has claimed more than 34,000 lives since 1989.
Pakistan denies the charge, saying it only offers moral and diplomatic support to what it views as the Kashmiris' legitimate struggle for self-determination.
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