Seven people, including three civilians and a rebel, were killed on Friday in a fierce gun battle with suspected separatists who were holed up in a hotel in Indian Kashmir (news – web sites), police said.
The three dead civilians were trapped inside the three-story hotel when the gunbattle erupted in Poonch near a cease-fire line dividing Indian and Pakistan Kashmir, a police official said. During the clash, in which three security men also died and nine people were wounded, police fired a rocket at the hotel, damaging part of the building. “We have three civilians dead who were inside the hotel apart from the other dead,” the official told Reuters in Srinagar, summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir state. The town of Poonch lies some 168 miles southwest of Srinagar. Full Story
