Officer, civilians among seven killed in Kashmir
(Updates with higher toll, detail)
By Ashok Pahalwan
JAMMU, India, Aug 27 (Reuters) - Suspected Muslim militants who slipped across the border from Pakistan into Indian Kashmir killed at least two civilians and an army officer in the Hindu-majority region of Jammu on Wednesday, police said.
Two militants disguised as policemen were shot dead by troops, and two soldiers were injured in the ongoing battle.
Earlier, the militants shot dead at least two civilians and an army officer, before forcing their way into a house and taking a family hostage.
"The hostages include some women and children, and we are maintaining the highest degree of caution," Brigadier P. Murli, an army spokesman, said.
Separately in central Kashmir, two protesters were killed and more than a dozen injured when troops fired on protesters who police said defied a curfew and shouted pro-Independence slogans.
Protests this month have convulsed the state of Jammu and Kashmir, sparked by a land row that has led to massive pro-independence demonstrations in the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley and strikes in the more peaceful Jammu region.
The crisis has strained relations between India and Pakistan, which both claim the region in full but rule in parts, damaging a tentative peace process and raising fears Kashmir could again become a hotspot between the two nuclear rivals.
It has raised fears of heightened communal tension in the state.
Killings of civilians by militants have been relatively rare in Jammu compared with the Kashmir Valley, where thousands have died in a two-decade old insurgency against Indian rule.
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In India's Kashmir valley, authorities have imposed a curfew this week to defuse protests by Muslim separatists.
Police on Monday killed five protesters who defied the curfew in the Kashmir valley, bringing the death toll to at least 28. The demonstrations are the biggest against Indian rule since a revolt broke out in 1989.
More than 600 people have been injured in clashes over the two weeks of protests.
Residents in the Kashmir valley said they were running short of food and essentials due to the four-day long curfew.
"There is nothing left to eat now except a little rice," Rabia Noor, a 35-year-old housewife who lives in the summer capital of Srinagar, told Reuters by telephone.
Security forces have thrown barbed wire coils across roads in the valley and federal police are patrolling the deserted streets in Srinagar.
"The valley looks like a big prison," 24-year-old Mohammad Usman, a university student said.
Authorities have detained four senior separatist leaders since Monday to defuse protests and raided the homes of another dozen leaders.
The crisis began after the Kashmir government promised to give forest land to a Hindu trust that runs Amarnath, a cave shrine visited by Hindu pilgrims. Many Muslims were enraged.
The government then rescinded its decision, which in turn angered Hindus in Jammu who attacked trucks carrying supplies to Kashmir valley and blocked the region's highway, the only surface link with the rest of India. Challenging the blockade, Kashmiris took to the streets.
In the Kashmir valley, the protests have tentatively united a disparate group of separatists such as the All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference, which condemns militant violence, and the breakaway group of hardliner Syed Ali Shah Geelani, for years seen as marginalised.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed in Kashmir since armed revolt against New Delhi's rule broke out two decades ago. (Additional reporting by Sheikh Mustaq in Srinagar, Writing by Alistair Scrutton; Editing by Bappa Majumdar and Alex Richardson)
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