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Muslim Student, Indian Soldier Killed in Kashmir
SRINAGAR, India, Aug 13 (News Agencies) - Seven people, including a Muslim student and an Indian soldier, were killed in Indian-controlled Kashmir, police said Monday.
The soldier died and two others were injured in an ambush by Muslim activists overnight in the northern Kupwara district, a police spokesman said - adding that army soldiers gunned down an activist in a separate incident in the same district.
Meanwhile, activists in the central Kashmir district of Doda gunned two people, including a former Kashmiri fighter, down overnight, police said.
On Monday, suspected Kashmiri activists stopped a bus at Kanihama, 16 miles north of the Kashmiri summer capital, Srinagar, and shot dead two of the passengers, police said.
In Safapora, 28 miles north of Srinagar, a university student was killed Monday when alleged Kashmiri activists threw a grenade at a security force vehicle. The grenade missed and exploded on the roadside.
Kashmiri activists have been increasing attacks in the run-up to India's independence day on Wednesday.
At least 17 separatists and four others have been killed in this weekend's violence, police and army officials said on Sunday.
Indian officials blamed most of the killings on renewed attempts by cross-border Muslim activists entering the Indian-occupied part of the divided state from the zone administered by Pakistan.
Five Kashmiri activists were killed Saturday night when Indian troops deployed along the de facto border, the Line of Control (LoC), spraying bullets at a group of 20 suspected activists, who had crossed into the southern district of Rajouri in Indian-held Kashmir, military officials said.
They said seven others were injured in the firing but ran across the LoC into Pakistani territory.
Five more activists, including three belonging to the Lashkar-e-Taiba group, were gunned down in a Saturday night firefight with army troops in the northern Kashmiri district of Baramulla, a police spokesman said Sunday.
He added that commandos belonging to the state police gunned down two Hizbul Mujahideen activists on Saturday night in Srinagar - the urban hub of the Kashmiri uprising in the Himalayan region.
A further five suspected activists were killed in three different overnight clashes in Kashmir, the official said, adding that two of them died when their hideout exploded into flames during a fierce exchange of gunfire with Indian soldiers in Kashmir's southern Doda district.
Suspected activists staged a grenade attack in northern Kashmir's Kupwara district, killing a soldier and wounding six civilians on Sunday, police here said.
In a similar attack in the southern Kashmiri town of Udhampur on Sunday, a border guard was killed and four others were injured, the officials said, adding that two civilians were killed elsewhere in renewed overnight violence in Kashmir.
Last week, New Delhi granted sweeping powers to its troops in the southern regions of Doda, Jammu and Udhampur, following the massacre of 15 Hindus in Doda and the killing of 10 more in an attack on the main train station of Jammu, Kashmir's winter capital.
Meanwhile, Indian border guards, backed by state police and other paramilitary troops, intensified search operations in Srinagar and elsewhere to try and prevent Kashmiri fighters from staging attacks on the eve of India's independence day (August 15th).
"We want to ensure watertight security for the independence day celebrations across Kashmir," said R. P. Singh, a senior officer.
"My boys are on the job, and they have had some successes," he said, referring to a cache of arms and ammunition seized from Kashmiri fighters in Srinagar last week.
More than 35,000 people have died in Kashmir, a Muslim-majority state currently split in two and occupied by India on one side, since 1989 when Kashmiri freedom fighters initiated an anti-Indian uprising.
India accuses Pakistan - which puts the death toll as high as 70,000 - of arming and training Kashmiri freedom fighters. Islamabad denies the accusations, but openly offers moral and diplomatic support to the Kashmiris' struggle for self-determination.
India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir in the past 54 years.
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