Suspected Muslim militants who slipped across the border from Pakistan into Indian Kashmir killed at least two civilians and an army officer in the Hindu-majority region of Jammu on Wednesday, police said. After a shooting rampage around Jammu, Kashmir's winter capital, three militants, disguised as police took six people hostage in a house on the outskirts of the city. The six included two children. One militant was shot dead by troops, and two soldiers were injured. “The hostages include some women and children, and we are maintaining a highest degree of caution,” Brigadier P. Murli, an army spokesman, said. Protests this month have convulsed Jammu and Kashmir, sparked by a land row that has led to massive pro-independence demonstrations in the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley and strikes in the relatively more peaceful Jammu region. The crisis has strained relations between India and Pakistan, which both claim the region in full but rule in parts, damaging a tentative peace process and raising fears Kashmir could again become a hotspot between the two nuclear rivals. It has also raised fears of communal tension in the state. Killings of civilians by militants have been relatively rare in Jammu compared with the Kashmir Valley, where thousands have died in a two-decade old insurgency by militants. Hindu groups in Jammu, demanding they be given land for a religious pilgrimage in Kashmir, planned a massive march in the city on Wednesday. In India's Kashmir valley, authorities have imposed a curfew this week to defuse protests by Muslim separatists. Police on Monday killed five protesters who defied the curfew in the Kashmir valley, bringing the death toll to at least 28. The demonstrations are the biggest against Indian rule since a revolt by the region's Muslim majority broke out in 1989. More than 600 people have been injured in clashes over the two weeks of protests. Residents in the Kashmir valley said they were running short of food and essentials due to the four-day long curfew. “There is nothing left to eat now except a little rice,” Rabia Noor, a 35-year-old housewife who lives in the summer capital of Srinagar, told Reuters over the phone. Security forces have thrown barbed wire coils across roads in the valley and federal police are patrolling the deserted streets in Srinagar.
