Indian troops killed two Muslim militants in Kashmir and five other people were killed a day ahead of controversial polls, police said.
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Members of India's paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) guard a street in Srinagar, the summer capital of the troubled northern Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir, today.
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Police said the two militants were killed by Indian troops overnight when they crossed the Line of Control (LoC), the de facto border that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan.
The infiltration was reported from the Machil sector of northern Kupwara district, which went to polls on September 16th in the first phase of voting for the state assembly.
New Delhi has demanded an end to rebel movements on the LoC before easing a 10-month military standoff that has brought hundreds of thousands of troops to nuclear-armed India and Pakistan's common borders.
In Doda district, which votes in the last round on October 8th, Indian troops cordoned off a rebel hideout at the village of Kiyar, 200 kilometers northeast of the winter capital Jammu.
"As the forces neared the spot they came under fire and in retaliation three militants were killed," a police spokesman said. He said the three dead were all Pakistanis and that "large quantities" of weapons and explosives were seized.
Another rebel and an Indian soldier were killed in separate incidents in southwestern Kashmir, police said.
Indian forces in Anantnag district 70 kilometres southeast of Srinagar detected a landmine planted inside another school earmarked as a polling station and defused it, a spokesman said.
AFP