Ten killed in fresh Kashmir violence

A bomb planted in a three-wheeler taxi went off Saturday as Indian soldiers passed by the Hazratbal shrine in the summer capital Srinagar, injuring three civilians and three troops of the Border Security Force, police said.

Hizbul Mujahedin, the largest rebel group in Kashmir, claimed responsibility for the blast, Srinagar-based media said.

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Hazratbal is considered Kashmir's holiest shrine as it houses a whisker said to have come from the Prophet Mohammed.

In the southern town of Pulwama, suspected rebels hurled a hand grenade at a Christian missionary school that went off in the lawn, injuring two Muslim employees of the school and a police guard, police said.

Gunmen had opened fire on a bus of the same school, Good Shepherd Mission, on Thursday without causing injuries.

Christians have rarely been attacked in the 14-year Islamic insurgency against Indian rule in Kashmir.

Separately, an Indian soldier and three rebels were killed Saturday in Rajouri district, 150km west of Kashmir's winter capital Jammu, senior police official S.M. Sahai said.

He said the gunbattle was triggered when the army cordoned off Rajdhani village where two or three militants were still trapped.

Two more rebels died in the southern Poonch district and a soldier was killed in northern Kupwara, police said.

Elsewhere in Kashmir, a middle-aged Muslim man and his daughter were killed by gunmen who swooped into Singhpora village in northern Baramulla district late Friday, a police spokesman said.

He said the slain woman was the widow of a rebel who was killed by Indian troops in battle last year.

In the same district suspected rebels shot dead an alleged security force informant and seriously injured another in two shoot-outs late Friday, police said.

More than 39,500 people have died in the Kashmir rebellion. Separatists put the toll between 80,000 and 100,000.