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NEW DELHI Thursday (AFP) Separatist violence in Indian Kashmir shows no sign of abating despite peace moves by India and Pakistan and a month-long army operation to smash guerrilla bases, security officials said.

At least 60 militants were killed in operation "Sarp Vinash" (Annihilation of Snakes), launched on April 21 in southern Kashmir by the Rashtriya Rifles, the Indian army's counter-insurgency wing, an army officer said. The operation has concentrated on a forbidding mountainous area in southern Poonch district known as Hill Kaka.

"Militants had set up fortifications in a large area of strategic importance to interdict Indian army supply lines," the officer told AFP. "Nearly 90 hideouts have been smashed," he said, adding that a large stash of arms and ammunition had been recovered, as well as satellite phones "with many Pakistani phone numbers stored in them."

The officer, who would not be named, identified Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Taiba, al-Badr Mujahedin and Hizbul Mujahedin as groups with hideouts in Hill Kaka and other rugged reaches of the Himalayan Peer Panjal range.

The chief of India's army, General N.C. Vij, flew in Tuesday to be briefed on the operation.

The assault was launched three days after Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on April 18 extended a "hand of friendship" to Pakistan, which was reciprocated by Islamabad.

The army operation and the thaw in India-Pakistan relations had raised hopes of a lessening of violence in the region.

"To the contrary it has increased," K. Sriniwasan, a senior officer of India's Border Security Force (BSF), told AFP.

"Every day innocent people are killed by militants, and security personnel targetted."

Since the peace overtures, he said, there have been five "suicide attacks" in Kashmir. Violence continues to kill 10 to 12 people every day.

In the past few days, at least eight people - five women and three children - have had their throats slit by suspected rebels. Sriniwasan also said the infiltration of rebels from the Pakistani to the Indian side of Kashmir "has not stopped."

On Wednesday, officials reported the deaths of 13 people, including four suspected rebels shot dead in an ambush after they crossed over the de facto border with Pakistan in the northern Kupwara sector. "On entering our area the army opened fire killing four militants, while a few managed to escape the dragnet," army spokesman Colonel Mukhtair Singh told AFP, adding that a search was launched to find the remaining rebels.

Muslim rebels were blamed for the deaths of four people, including a suspected informant and a pro-government militant.

Rebels also opened fire at a vehicle of India's Intelligence Bureau, killing a cook working for the federal department and injuring two others, police said.

Srinagar, the summer capital and heart of the insurgency, was shut down Wednesday by a strike called to mark the deaths of two influential separatist leaders.

Molvi Mohammed Farooq, a prominent cleric, was murdered at his residence on May 21, 1990, while Abdul Gani Lone was assassinated last year during a function to mark Farooq's death. Security rebels and separatists have blamed each other for both slayings.

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