Fourteen Die In Kashmir Assault

Two suspected Islamic militants stormed an army camp in Kashmir early Saturday, killing 12 soldiers before being slain themselves, as India's president wrapped up a three-day visit to the strife-torn Himalayan region.

The rebels attacked an army brigade headquarters in Sunjwan, on the outskirts of Jammu, by scaling the wire fence. The attackers then detonated several hand grenades and opened fire, killing 12 soldiers and wounding seven others before they were killed, army spokesman Brig. B.S. Jind said.

Al-Nasireen, a little-known Islamic rebel group, claimed responsibility for the attack in a call to the British Broadcasting Corp. office in Jammu.

Meanwhile, the army killed two commanders of the rebel group Hezb-ul-Mujahedeen in pre-dawn fighting on Saturday near Beerwah, a town some 15 miles southwest of Srinagar, army spokesman Lt. Col. Mukhtiar Singh said. There was no independent confirmation of the army claim.

Every day of President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam's tour — the first presidential visit to the Indian-held portion of Kashmir in five years — was marred with violence.

A government soldier and three suspected rebels were killed in a gunbattle on Thursday. Three government soldiers and seven suspected insurgents were killed in unrest on Friday.

More than a dozen Islamic rebel groups have been fighting for Kashmir's independence from India or its merger with Pakistan since 1989. More than 63,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed during the insurgency.

India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars over the mountainous, Muslim-dominated Kashmir region, which was made part of Hindu-majority India when Britain made both countries independent in 1947.

The two countries regularly trade fire over the "line of control" that separates their forces in the region.

Fighting escalated to the brink of war in 1999 and again last summer, raising fears of an all-out confrontation between the nuclear-armed rivals.

Pakistan claims to give only moral support to the rebels, but India says the association between Islamabad and the militants is stronger than that.