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| Tuesday, 9 September 2003 |
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Eight killed as army sends Gurkhas to end Kashmir stand-off SRINAGAR, India, Monday (AFP) Eight people, including an army officer, died in rebel violence in Kashmir, where 500 Gurkha soldiers were sent into the thick southern forests to track down seven Muslim rebels who have eluded the military for six days. The latest deaths take to 95 the number of people dead in Kashmir bloodshed in the week after top rebel commander Gazi Baba was killed by troops on August 30. Heavily armed rebels late Saturday ambushed an army patrol in the village of Chandakoot near Sopore town, 50 kilometers (31 miles) north of the summer capital Srinagar, killing a junior commissioned officer and injuring three soldiers, a police spokesman said. He said rebels fired from automatic rifles and hurled grenades at the patrol of the army's counter-insurgency wing, the Rashtriya (National) Rifles. The area was immediately sealed off to find the rebels, although no arrests were immediately made, police said. One of four Indian army soldiers injured Friday during a similar ambush on their patrol in the neighbouring Rafiabad area died in Srinagar's military hospital Sunday, police said. At another Srinagar hospital, six-year-old Zeeshan Ahmed died from injuries Tuesday from a landmine in southern Kashmir, police said. Another civilian was killed in that blast and 21 other people, including six soldiers, were injured. Meanwhile, the Indian army sent 500 Gurkha soldiers into the thick forests of southern Kashmir where seven militants have held up hundreds of soldiers since Tuesday. Meanwhile Indian Kashmir's main separatist alliance appeared on the verge of splitting Sunday after half its member parties rallied behind a hardliner and expressed no confidence in the umbrella group's moderate leader. The heads of 13 of the 25 parties in the All Parties Hurriyat Conference agreed at a meeting that the July 12 election of Moulvi Abbas Ansari as the alliance's leader was "manipulated" and invalid, participants said. They gathered at the home in the summer capital Srinagar of the 71-year-old firebrand Syed Ali Geelani, who has spent years in Indian jails for advocating the province's merger with Pakistan. |
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