Fresh Kashmir Violence Kills 19

Nineteen people, including eight Indian security force members, were killed and 26 wounded Thursday in fresh separatist violence in revolt-racked Kashmir, police said.

Rebel violence has continued in Kashmir despite an easing of tensions between nuclear-armed neighbors India and Pakistan, who have massed one million troops on their border.

Three soldiers were killed when an army vehicle ran over a landmine near Pahalgam, 60 miles southeast of Srinagar, summer capital of India's northern state of Jammu and Kashmir.

Kashmir's front-line militant group, Hizbul Mujahideen, claimed responsibility for the attack. A police official said security forces cordoned off the area and were searching for suspects.

"Our Mujahideen carried a landmine explosion in Pahalgam area. An army vehicle was completely damaged and four soldiers died on the spot," a Hizbul spokesman told Reuters. But police said only three soldiers died in the blast.

In a separate incident, suspected rebels lobbed a grenade in a crowded marketplace in the town of Anantnag, 35 miles south of Srinagar, injuring 22 people, a police official said.

"The target of the grenade was a Central Reserve Police Force patrol," the official told Reuters. "But the grenade missed its target and exploded on the road, injuring 22 people, including four (police force) personnel."

No group has claimed responsibility for the grenade attack.

Later Thursday, two policemen were killed and four injured when militants attacked a police patrol in downtown Srinagar, police said. A spokesman for a lesser known militant group Al-Madina Regiment called newspapers in Srinagar and claimed responsibility.

Police also recovered five bullet-riddled bodies of Muslim villagers in Gulbadan forests of Shopian in south Kashmir.

"The dead include father and his son. Police are investigating," the official added.

Elsewhere three security force members and six militants died in shootouts across the disputed scenic region, police said.

In the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand, meanwhile, a bomb exploded on a train wounding at least 11 people, officials said.

The explosion took place in a passenger car as the train neared the station of Chandrapora, 25 miles north of Ranchi, the state capital, said B.K. Sharma, a railway official. The train was on its way from Patna, capital of the neighboring Bihar state, and was headed for Ranchi, 185 miles to the south.

Meanwhile, the federal government said it had banned a militant outfit, Dukhtaran-e-Millat, under its tough anti-terror law.

About a dozen groups are battling Indian rule in Jammu and Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state, where officials say more than 33,000 people have been killed since a rebellion broke out in 1989. Separatists put the toll closer to 80,000.

India, which controls 45 percent of Kashmir, accuses Islamabad of arming Muslim militants and pushing them into Indian Kashmir to fight New Delhi's rule.

Pakistan denies the charge but President Pervez Musharraf has vowed to stop militant incursions across a cease-fire line dividing the disputed Himalayan region.

India's Defense Minister George Fernandes said on Thursday that hundreds of thousands of Indian troops would remain posted along the border for at least another four months.

"We cannot withdraw the forces until elections in Jammu and Kashmir are over and after that the decision depends on the situation," Fernandes said in the western state of Gujarat, one of five Indian states where troops are deployed along the 1,800-mile border with Pakistan. "They will remain there 'til October."

The two countries have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir since they won independence from Britain in 1947.