At least 23 people have been killed in Indian Kashmir in a bomb attack and separate gunbattles between security forces and suspected Muslim rebels.
The surge in violence on Tuesday comes just a few days after Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee called for talks with Pakistan and with separatists to end the bloodshed in Kashmir, the Himalayan valley claimed by both nuclear-armed neighbours.
A homemade bomb planted by suspected Islamic separatists went off early in the morning as villagers at Tral, south of the summer capital, Srinagar, crowded into a communal yard to milk their cattle, police said. Six people were killed and another 13 were injured, many seriously.
Hours later, four soldiers were wounded when their vehicle ran over a landmine in nearby Qazigund, police said. No group claimed responsibility for either explosion.
In the biggest clashes, 13 suspected militants were shot dead in a battle with troops 160 miles north of the winter capital, Jammu, near the ceasefire line separating Indian and Pakistani Kashmir, police said. They did not say if Indian forces suffered any casualties.
Four separatists were killed in another shootout 110 miles north of Jammu.
India accuses Pakistan, an Islamic nation, of arming and training rebels and sending them across the border. These infiltrations increase in summer, when snows melt in the mountains which straddle the frontier. Pakistan denies the charge.
The two nations came close to their third war over Kashmir at the height of a 10-month military standoff last year, triggered by an attack on India's parliament that New Delhi blamed on Kashmiri separatists based in Pakistan.
India says more than 38,000 people have died in the revolt against New Delhi's rule in its only Muslim-majority state, although separatists put the toll closer to 85,000.