Militants cut villagers' noses off

Suspected Islamic rebels today cut the noses off five Kashmiri Muslim villagers, accusing them of being police informants, officials said.

Seven armed men entered Banihati village, pulled four men and one woman from their homes and mutilated them in front of other villagers, police in nearby Rajouri town said.

The victims were taken to a government hospital in Rajouri.

Police said they suspect the gunmen were members of one of the Islamic militant groups fighting since 1989 for Kashmir’s independence from predominantly Hindu India, or its merger with Islamic Pakistan.

Banihati is about 118 miles north-west of Jammu, winter capital of Jammu-Kashmir, India’s only Muslim-majority state.