Eight militants killed in gunbattle

INDIA: At least eight suspected Islamic militants trying to cross into India’s portion of disputed Kashmir from the Pakistani side were killed during a long gunbattle early Friday, army and police officials said.

The armed men had cut through a barbed-wire fence marking the frontier of the divided Himalayan territory and were moving into Indian Kashmir when they were spotted by an army patrol, said Col. H. Juneja, an Indian army spokesman.

“The militants opened fire when they were challenged and a six-hour-long gunbattle ensued,” said Col. Juneja. “We have found eight bodies and a cache of arms and ammunition.”

Police were trying to establish the identities of the dead men and the militant group they belonged to, said Vijay Kumar, a superintendent of police.

A search was under way to see if any more militants had been killed in the gunfight, Kumar said.

The men were spotted in Kashmir’s Keran sector, a rugged mountainous area about 110 kilometers (70 miles) north of Srinagar, the summer capital of India’s Jammu-Kashmir state.

Srinagar, Friday, AP