- SRINAGAR, India (Reuters)
- Twelve people including two children have been killed in rebel attacks
in India's Jammu and Kashmir state in the past 24 hours, police said on
Sunday.
-
- Violence in the region, at the heart of an eight-month
military stand-off between India and Pakistan, has been on the rise since
New Delhi announced it would hold state elections in Kashmir in September
and October.
-
- A police spokesman said militants fired at a house in
a village southwest of Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir.
-
- "Militants killed two sons, aged 10 and 12, of a
Muslim day laborer in the Poonch district and injured his eight-year old
third son," he said.
-
- The militants barged into their house early on Sunday.
Poonch is 256km (160 miles) north of winter capital, Jammu.
-
- "The militants are trying to intimidate the employees
by killing their children so that they will not accept election duty,"
the official added.
-
- Earlier on Saturday evening, an army soldier was killed
and two others wounded when suspected rebels attacked a security patrol
at Naidgam area of Doda district, police said.
-
- In another incident, a security force personnel was killed
when a bomb fitted in a television went off at the gates of security camp
in Shopian in south Kashmir, police said.
-
- They said four militants, two security force personnel
and two civilians were killed in separate shootouts across the region since
Saturday evening.
-
- India accuses Pakistan of sponsoring a 13-year-old insurgency
in Kashmir by arming, training and sending guerrillas across the Line of
Control which divides Indian and Pakistani-controlled areas of Kashmir.
-
- Pakistan denies the accusation and says it only provides
moral and diplomatic support to what it calls the legitimate Kashmiri struggle
for self-determination.
-
- Officials say more than 35,000 people have been killed
since the rebellion broke out in 1989. Separatists put the toll at more
than 80,000.
-
- People in the state fear violence will increase as militant
groups fighting New Delhi's rule in the region have vowed to disrupt the
elections.
-
- (with additional reporting by Ashok Pahalwan in JAMMU)
-
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