India pulled out around 3,000 troops from Kashmir on Saturday in a planned withdrawal of army units from the region, officials said, as the peace process between New Delhi and Islamabad came under strain this week. Last week, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in a move to give momentum to the sluggish India-Pakistan peace process, announced New Delhi would withdraw troops in Kashmir. He cited a sharp drop in separatist guerrilla attacks in the Himalayan territory as the reason for the reduction. India has at least 400,000 troops in Kashmir. "Around 3,000 troops of three different army units involved in counter-terrorism operations have been de-inducted from the border district of Rajouri on Saturday," a defence official said. The soldiers left their bases in convoys of trucks, jeeps and buses from the Hindu-dominated Jammu region of India's only Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir. Separately, an army officer said troops were not withdrawn from the military Line of Control that divides Indian and Pakistani Kashmir.
