Indian security forces ended their siege of a mosque in Jammu and Kashmir on todayafter killing all six separatist guerrillas who had taken refuge there after a shootout.
Three Muslim separatist guerrillas were killed in an exchange of fire yesterday after troops surrounded the mosque in Anantnag district. The rebels entered the mosque after a shootout on Sunday evening. One policeman was reported killed and several injured.
Anantnag is 55 km south of Srinagar, the summer capital of India's Jammu and Kashmir state.
Kashmir's main separatist alliance accused the Indian army of damaging the mosque in the siege.
The Indian army claimed it had exercised restraint throughout the standoff with the rebels inside.
The security forces and village elders made several appeals to the guerrillas to leave the mosque, the army said.
A caller claiming to be a spokesman for the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba guerrilla force telephoned newspaper offices in Srinagar saying the militants in the mosque were members of his group.
Violence has surged across the Himalayan state since the Indian government called off a six-month-old ceasefire against the rebels last month. Nearly 200 people, most of them separatist guerrillas, have been killed since then.
In a similar incident in Indian Kashmir last month, militants fled from a mosque under cover of darkness after security forces lifted a siege out of respect for the sanctity of the place of worship.
