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SRINAGAR, India, Wednesday (AFP) The heavily militarised borders in Kashmir were calm Wednesday as a ceasefire between the Indian and Pakistani armies entered a second week, but separatist-linked violence has killed 42 people during the period, police said.

Apart from the killings, at least 56 people were injured during the past week inside Indian-administered Kashmir in attacks by Islamic rebels opposed to New Delhi's rule in the divided Himalayan state, police said. The ceasefire, part of tentative peace overtures between arch-rivals India and Pakistan, took effect at midnight on November 25 and was still holding a week later, police said Wednesday.

There has been no violation of the ceasefire by either side since it began, a police officer told AFP.

"The guns are absolutely silent along the normally volatile Line of Control (LoC)," Mohammed Shafiq, a police officer in Uri border town said by phone, referring to the de facto border separating the rival armies in Kashmir.

Islamic guerrillas, who have been waging an armed rebellion in Indian Kashmir since 1989 at a cost of tens of thousands of lives, say the ceasefire does not affect them and have vowed to step up their activities.

Police said 13 of the deaths since the truce began were policemen and soldiers who died in ambushes. In one attack on Tuesday, 19 policemen, including the deputy police chief of southern Anantnag district, were injured.

Government troops have shot dead 20 militants since the ceasefire while two former rebels were allegedly killed by militants.

Seven civilians, including a worker of the region's main opposition National Conference, were killed in the period, police said.

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