Suspected militants gun down shepherds in Kashmir

Eight shepherds in Indian Kashmir were today gunned down in their homes by suspected Islamic militants, police said.

The attackers happened in three homes in Duadasan Bhala, a village 115 miles north of Jammu, the winter capital of India’s Jammu-Kashmir state. Five men and three women died.

The killings took place as US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was in South Asia to discuss cross-border terrorism in the disputed Himalayan province.

India accuses Pakistan of training and arming Islamic militants and pushing them into Indian-controlled Kashmir, a charge Pakistan denies.

Yesterday, Mr Armitage said in New Delhi that Washington feared further violence in Kashmir ahead of state elections there in September and October. He is scheduled to visit Pakistan today.

A.K. Suri, director-general of police, blamed the attack in Duadasan Bhala, a village in Rajauri district, on insurgents fighting for Kashmir’s independence from India or its merger with Pakistan.

No one claimed responsibility for the pre-dawn attack.

Police reinforcements have rushed to the area to search for the assailants.

Militant groups have asked people to boycott the elections. Voting in the Rajauri area will be held

on September 16.

Suspected militants killed another four people in separate raids on two villages, Manjakot in Rajauri district and Ganodh in Doda district, police said.

The three villages targeted today have sizable Muslim populations, and the motive appears to be to create panic before voting scheduled for September and October in state legislature elections, the officer said.