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.

Police said three or four men believed to be separatist militants hid in the mosque in Banihal town after evading security forces at a nearby house.

"They moved from one house to another and started firing at the forces before taking refuge in the mosque," a police official told Reuters. "They are firing at us from the mosque now."

Muslim guerrillas fighting against Indian rule in Kashmir since 1989 often shelter in mosques when pursued by security forces in mainly Hindu India's only Muslim-majority state.

North of Srinagar, three Indian soldiers died in an ambush by separatists on Wednesday night and a soldier and three rebels from Kashmir's main militant group, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, died in a gun battle in the neighbouring Sopore earlier on Wednesday night.

Suspected militants last week attacked a slum in Jammu and killed 28 Hindus, almost two months to the day after militants killed more than 30 people in a raid on an army camp that edged India and Pakistan closer to war.

India, which accuses Pakistan of backing the separatists in Kashmir, has been restrained in its response to Saturday's massacre as fresh diplomatic efforts get underway to resolve the stand-off.