Kashmiri Militants Attack Hindu Temples

Security forces killed three Islamic militants Monday, ending gun battles that left 14 people dead at two Hindu temples, said police in India's Jammu-Kashmir state.

At least 50 others, mostly Hindu devotees visiting this city of temples, were injured, said Ashok Suri, the state police chief.

Ten civilians and one policeman were killed besides the three militants, who had hurled grenades and firing automatic weapons at the Hindu shrines.

Police and paramilitary troops took control of the Raghunath Temple and the nearby Panchvaktar Temple in Jammu, the state's winter capital, in the operation that began Sunday night.

One of the militants was shot dead in a narrow alley behind the Panchvaktar Temple on Monday, police said.

The militant attacks came amid a flare-up in violence in the northern state, where a separatist Islamic insurgency has killed more than 61,000 people since 1989.

The Indian government accused the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Tayyaba of carrying out the attack, and Pakistan's government condemned the assault as terrorism.

Police imposed a curfew to prevent potential violence between Hindus and Muslims.

The militants' attack on the shrines was the third major militant attack in India's portion of divided Kashmir since Friday. Over the past three days, 38 people have been killed.

The Lashkar-e-Tayyaba claimed responsibility for an attack Friday on a paramilitary barracks in a hotel in Srinagar, but no claims of responsibility have been received for a land mine explosion under a bus and a car on Saturday, or the temple attack.

Indian police said hundreds of Hindus had hid in small rooms or behind pillars as militants entered the 142-year-old Raghunath Temple and the Panchvaktar Temple late Sunday.

Protesters, some carrying iron rods and rocks, jostled with police, accusing them of failing to protect civilians.

Security forces had fired rocket launchers into the two temples to root out the militants.

Sunday's attack was the second on the Raghunath Temple. In March, suspected Islamic militants raided the temple, killing eight people. The two attackers were later shot down.

"Temples are soft targets. The terrorists who come from Pakistan want to spread panic and provoke religious violence," junior federal minister I.D. Swami told the private Zee News television channel.

Kashmir is India's only Muslim-majority state, and has been a source of tension between India and Pakistan since their independence from Britain and partition in 1947. The two countries have gone to war three times, and Kashmir was the spark on two occasions. China — India's biggest regional rival — also holds some Kashmiri territory.

In 1998, India and Pakistan both tested nuclear weapons for the first time, raising the cross-border stakes. India accuses Pakistan of actively supporting militants that cross the border to attack targets in Kashmir. Pakistan denies this, although it acknowledges giving "moral support" to militants it describes as "freedom fighters."

Earlier this year, Pakistan and India massed troops on the border and appeared to be on the brink of war after India accused Pakistan of not doing enough to prevent terrorism.

Both sides have reduced the tension since then, but low-level fighting continues.

Cross-border artillery shelling between Pakistani and Indian troops killed a woman and injured three others in a village about 40 miles southeast of Muzaffarabad, capital of the Pakistan-controlled part of Kashmir, Pakistani police said Monday.

Late Sunday, two other men were wounded and three homes were destroyed in Indian shelling in Lipa Valley, 60 miles northeast of Muzaffarabad, said Khalid Mahmood Chohan, a senior Pakistani police official.