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Twenty-One Killed in Violence in Indian-Occupied Kashmir
SRINAGAR, India, Oct 16 (News Agencies) - Fifteen Muslim activists and an Indian soldier were among twenty-one people killed Tuesday in violence in Indian-occupied Kashmir, police said.
The toll also included a policeman, two civilians and two children.
The fresh wave of violence came as U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell held talks with Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf and said the dispute over Kashmir was "central" to relations between India and Pakistan.
It also followed heavy overnight firing across the Line of Control - the de facto border that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan.
Indian troops fired on Pakistani positions, breaking weeks of relative peace across the disputed Himalayan border.
An Indian police spokesman said two more soldiers received bullet wounds during the clash which erupted after the army moved in to conduct house-to-house searches in the village.
The Pakistan-based Kashmiri group Lashkar-e-Taiba vowed Tuesday to launch attacks against India to avenge the attacks.
"Special fidayeen [martyr] squads have been asked to carry out attacks against Indian security forces," Lashkar spokesman Abu Osama said, in response to the "unprovoked attacks against Pakistan".
"Attacks by Indian army on Pakistani soil will cost India dear," he told Agence France-Presse (AFP) by telephone from Pakistan.
Three activists and an Indian army soldier were killed in a fierce encounter at the village of Shalinder, near Bandipora town, 37 miles north of Srinagar, Kashmir's summer capital.
Soldiers shot dead another three Muslim activists near Langate township, 68 miles north of Srinagar, police said.
Two more were killed by troops at neighboring Tootmar Gali in the northern Kupwara district.
The Indian army, assisted by counter-insurgency police and paramilitary troops, has been carrying out search operations in the northern Kashmir districts of Baramulla and Kupwara following reports that armed activists had infiltrated into the Indian side of Kashmir.
Both districts border Pakistani-controlled Kashmir.
At Heerpora, near Shopian town, 30 miles south of Srinagar, two Muslim activists were killed in another cordon and search operation by Indian occupation forces, police said.
Another five were killed in separate encounters in the Rajouri, Poonch, Anantnag and Kupwara districts overnight, police said, while suspected "militants" shot dead a police constable, a Muslim woman and another civilian in Kashmir.
A Muslim boy was killed when he touched an abandoned explosive device in the southern Anantnag district, while another boy was killed when he was caught in crossfire between activists and security forces in the central Kashmir district of Budgam.
More than 35,000 people have been killed in the conflict in Kashmir since 1989.
India blames Pakistan for arming and funding Kashmiri "militants." Islamabad, which puts the death toll as high as 70,000, denies the charge, but says it provides diplomatic, political and moral support to the Kashmiri struggle for self-determination.
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