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Eighteen Killed in Spiraling Violence in Indian-held Kashmir
SRINAGAR, India, Aug 24 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Ten Indian occupation personnel were among 18 people killed in Indian-held Kashmir in separate incidents of violence, Indian police told news agencies Friday.
Seven policemen were killed when cadres of the Kashmiri resistance group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, stormed a police station in Kashmir's southern district of Poonch.
The pro-Pakistan Lashkar-e-Taiba said it had carried out the pre-dawn attack in the border town of Poonch, 188 miles north of Jammu, Kashmir's winter capital.
Two activists dressed in army fatigues lobbed a grenade at the building, killing six policemen, before opening fire.
Another wounded constable was taken to hospital, where he died of his injuries.
Residents stayed indoors as police launched a hunt for the assailants, who escaped with arms and ammunition.
Local police superintendent Kamal Saidi said the attack appeared to have been carried out to avenge the killing of more than 250 activists in the Poonch and Rajouri districts during the past three months.
Lashkar spokesman Abu Osama told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that the group would continue such attacks in the region.
"The activists are trying to spill over the violence to Jammu region to scare away the minorities," Kashmir police chief Ashok Suri said.
"But we are hopeful we will stop them," he told AFP, before flying to Poonch to visit the police who lost their colleagues in Friday's attack.
Resistance operations by Muslim activists increased markedly in the Jammu region of Kashmir after it was declared a "disturbed area" by the Indian army earlier this month - a move which allowed the military forces sweeping powers of arrest and detention. The groups complain of grave Indian human rights abuses.
The number of attacks by activists also rose following last week's statement by Indian home minister L.K. Advani that he was granting amnesty to troops alleged to have carried out human rights violations in insurgency-hit states of India.
Over the past 40 days more than three-dozen Hindus have been gunned down in Doda.
Activists and security forces have blamed each other for the killings, which have sparked panic among the minority Hindus in Doda, Udhampur, Rajouri and Poonch.
Intelligence sources indicate that activists are set to increase their operations in the Jammu region in the coming days.
"We are mobilizing our resources to meet the challenge," said a police officer involved in counter-resistance in the region.
In other incidents, three Indian soldiers were killed and two injured in a gun battle between security forces and activists that lasted 14 hours in Supewal, on the outskirts of Jammu, police said.
The activists managed to evade and escape from a security cordon comprising of more than 1,000 army and special counter-insurgency police personnel, police added.
The army recovered 13.2 pounds of explosives, two rifle grenades and large quantities of arms and ammunition.
In Kishtiwar, in the Doda district, Indian occupation forces imposed curfew Friday as a "precautionary measure," after the death of a Muslim youth in a Jammu hospital.
Residents said the youth was arrested by the army and admitted to Kishtiwar hospital in critical condition after hours of interrogation. He was later transferred to the Jammu hospital where he died late Thursday.
In the Doda district, Indian security forces shot dead the local area commander of Kashmir's dominant militant group, the Hizbul Mujahideen, while unidentified assailants gunned down a civilian.
Three other activists were killed in two encounters in the Pulwama and Kupwara districts of Kashmir overnight, police said; and two others died in separate incidents of violence elsewhere in Kashmir.
Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan and claimed by both, who have fought two of their three wars over the Himalayan state. The fight for independence and the Indian military crackdown on the movement has claimed at least 35,000 lives since its launch in 1989.
Pakistan, which puts the death toll as high as 70,000, denies Indian allegations that it is behind "cross-border terrorism," and has repeatedly announced it backs the Kashmiris' legitimate struggle for self-determination.
Last month in the Indian city of Agra, a summit level meeting between Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf collapsed over disagreements on Kashmir.
Frustrated independence leaders in Indian-occupied Kashmir have universally blamed the Indian government for the failure of the two sides to agree a joint declaration at the end of the summit.
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