Sixteen people, including a child, were killed today in fresh separatist violence in India's strife-torn Kashmir region, police said.
The bloodshed, in India's only Muslim-majority state, followed a Thursday suicide attack on parliament in the national capital New Delhi. India blamed Kashmiri separatists for that attack, which killed 12 people, including five assailants.
Police in Kashmir said seven people, including a six-year-old girl and a woman, died on Saturday when a gunbattle broke out between rebels and soldiers near Sopore township north of Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir.
Police said four militants and a soldier were among the dead.
Earlier, unidentified militants shot dead two senior activists of Kashmir's ruling National Conference party near the Pakistan border in Kupwara district northwest of Srinagar.
Elsewhere, five civilians, a militant and a policeman were killed in separate shootouts across the troubled region.
Over a dozen people, mostly civilians, were wounded.
On Friday evening, rebels attacked an Indian security camp at Chatru area of Kishtwar district in Jammu region, the winter capital of Himalayan state.
The militants fired grenades and continued firing for half an hour on the security camp. The fire was returned and there was no loss of life or property, the police official said.
Nearly a dozen militant groups have been fighting India's rule in Jammu and Kashmir.
India which controls 45 percent of the disputed territory accuses its nuclear rival and neighbour Pakistan of stoking the rebellion in Kashmir.
Pakistan denies the charge but says it gives Kashmiri militants moral and diplomatic support. It rules over a third of the territory. China controls the remainder.
Authorities say more than 30,000 people have been killed in a rebellion which broke out at the end of 1989. Separatists put the toll closer to 80,000.