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Three killed in Kashmir clashes

SRINAGAR: Two Islamic militants and an Indian soldier were killed in clashes in held Kashmir, while three soldiers died in an accident, officials said on Monday.

Police said Indian troops shot dead two Muslim militants during a fierce gun battle in the Baramulla district, which borders Azad Kashmir. “The fighting has stopped, but a search operation is being carried out in the area surrounded by paddy fields,” a police spokesman said, adding that a soldier was injured in the fighting.

Another soldier who was injured in an overnight gun battle in southern Rajouri, died in hospital on Monday, the spokesman said. Four rebels were killed in that clash.

Meanwhile, three soldiers died when their welding machine blew up overnight in the village of Akchinmal near Kargil, an army officer said. A police officer, however, said some explosive material was found at the scene and the soldiers may have been “fiddling with some explosives that went off accidentally”.

Elsewhere in Kashmir, about 2,000 villagers marched to protest alleged harassment by soldiers in Argam village in Baramulla district, police said. The villagers alleged that the soldiers, in a search operation on Sunday, harassed and mistreated them. They told the police that soldiers entered their houses, beat up the men and smashed windows. District authorities reached the area and were trying to pacify the villagers, police said.

Amnesty International (AI) urged India Monday to be more serious about investigating alleged human rights violations in Kashmir. The London-based human rights watchdog urged authorities to investigate alleged violations “exhaustively”.

“Despite the government’s own acknowledgement that 3,184 people ‘disappeared’ in Jammu and Kashmir between 1990 and November 2002, very few security force personnel have been prosecuted for the illegal killings of people who have ‘disappeared’,” said Catherine Baber, AI’s acting director for Asia.

“Only a handful of those crimes have been the subject of official investigation,” she wrote in a letter to the Kashmir-based Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons. The association believes some 8,000 to 10,000 people have disappeared in Kashmir since 1989. afp

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