Security forces battled Muslim insurgents holed up in a hotel in the heart of Indian Kashmir's main city Thursday, with a policeman and two insurgents killed a day after four other officers died trying to storm the building. The shooting had ended by midday Thursday, and officials declared the nearly 27-hour standoff over after troops secured the hotel in Srinagar's Lal Chowk area, said Deputy Inspector-General of Police Farooq Ahmed. «The operation is over,» said Police Director General Gopal Sharma. «We are clearing the debris.» «They (the suspects) tried to jump out and get away, but we shot them down,» Ahmed said earlier. The standoff began at noon Wednesday, when gunmen at the hotel opened fire at a building on a nearby paramilitary base, Ahmed said. Police besieged the hotel and tried to storm it after several hours, but were unable to dislodge the gunmen. Three officers were killed in the initial assault and another died later, said Sanjiv Sharma, head of one of the security forces operating at the scene. Thirteen other people, several of them civilians, were reported wounded in the fray.
