Army trades fire with mosque rebels

INDIAN security forces surrounded a mosque in Kashmir yesterday and exchanged fire with suspected militants hiding inside, hours after three soldiers were killed in an ambush, police said.

Seven people - four soldiers and three rebels - have been killed in at least three clashes in the past 24 hours in the north of Jammu and Kashmir state, the Himalayan region at the center of a military stand-off between India and Pakistan.

Sporadic gunfire continued into the afternoon as security forces laid siege to the mosque, midway between the state's summer and winter capitals, Srinagar and Jammu.