Girl mutilated by rebels in Kashmir

Guerillas chopped off the ears, nose and tongue of a teenage girl they suspected of helping police today, while other violence in Indian-controlled Kashmir left at least eight people dead, police said.

The girl was held captive for eight days before the rebels abandoned her in a field outside her village Manoh, 200 miles southwest of Srinagar, the capital of India’s Jammu-Kashmir state, police said.

Border guards killed three suspected Islamic rebels who entered Indian-controlled Kashmir, before they could cross a barbed wire fence about a mile inside Indian territory, an army spokesman said.

India expects to complete the fence by September to keep out Islamic fighters from Pakistan.

Army spokesman Lieut Colonel Mukhtiar Singh said the guards also arrested two suspected guerrillas after an exchange of gunfire along the cease-fire line dividing Kashmir between India and Pakistan. Both nuclear-armed neighbour countries claim all the Himalayan territory.

Singh said five schoolchildren were wounded in crossfire between Indian soldiers and suspected rebels who attacked an army convoy on a highway outside Srinagar.

Suspected insurgents later exploded a grenade outside a mosque in Handwara, a town close to the disputed border with Pakistan, killing one civilian and one policeman. It also wounded 18 civilians and one policeman.

He said two suspected rebels were killed in a clash with government soldiers in a forest area in Dogarpora, nearly 65 miles north of Srinagar, while another suspected insurgent died after a shootout with the Indian army in Kangan.