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SRINAGAR, India, Thursday (AFP) Five Indian security force personnel and nine Islamic rebels were among 19 people killed in Kashmir hours after controversial assembly elections in the state, police said Wednesday.

The army cordoned off an area in the village of Wagoora in the northern district of Baramulla late Tuesday after a tip-off that rebels were present, police sources said.

The holed-up militants opened fire, engaging the troops in a seven-hour battle that left four soldiers and the two rebels dead and five other soldiers and a civilian injured.

Meanwhile, at Kanchan village, also in Baramulla, along the Line of Control (LoC) -- the defacto border which divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan -- the Indian army shot dead four militants late Tuesday, a police spokesman said.

He said they were killed after they had crossed over the border from Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

Three AK rifles and 21 hand grenades were recovered near the encounter site.

A member of India's Border Security Force (BSF) was killed and eight others injured in the southern Rajouri district when Muslim militants ambushed their patrol overnight, a police spokesman said.

Three more militants were killed in two separate encounters elsewhere.

The battles came hours after polls closed in three Kashmir districts in the second round of voting for the Indian state's assembly.

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