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JAMMU, India, April 8 (AFP) - Suspected Muslim militants killed five Hindu villagers in an early morning attack in Indian-controlled Kashmir on Monday, a police spokesman said.

The spokesman said a group of heavily armed militants had entered a village in Udhampur district, some 125 kilometers (80 miles) north of Kashmir's winter capital Jammu.

"Three men and two women were shot dead and the attackers also burned several homes before escaping," he told AFP. Four people were seriously injured.

Kashmir police chief Ashok Kumar Suri left Jammu on Monday by helicopter to visit the site of the attack.

The latest killings came barely a week after 11 people were killed and 25 others injured when Muslim suicide bombers stormed a revered Hindu temple packed with worshippers in Jammu city.

At least 35,000 people have died in Kashmir since an Islamic insurgency against Indian rule broke out in 1989. Separatists put the death toll twice as high.

India accuses Pakistan of arming and training militants who cross the disputed border to fight in the insurgency.

Pakistan says it provides only moral and political support to the Kashmiris' indigenous "struggle for self-determination." 

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