Militants who had gathered in a Kashmir mosque fled in darkness after Indian security forces lifted a siege on the building to respect its sanctity, police said today.
Separately Indian soldiers shot dead a foreign militant in a gunbattle at Loalab in northern Kashmir today and recovered a large quantity of arms and ammunition, an army spokesman said.
Keeping in view the sanctity of the mosque the cordon around the mosque at Kharwar was withdrawn late last night, a police official told reporters.
Two Indian security force personnel were killed and several others were wounded yesterday when a group of two to three militants opened fire on a patrol and took shelter in the mosque.
The security forces immediately laid siege to the mosque at Kharwar near Shopian town 50 km (30 miles) south of Srinagar, summer capital of the Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Nearly a dozen militant groups are fighting New Delhi's rule in Jammu and Kashmir state where officials say more than 30,000 people have been killed since the rebellion took off at the end of 1989.