SRINAGAR, 3 December 2002 — United States Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill arrived in Kashmir yesterday for a fact-finding tour of the region, official sources said.

The envoy was accompanied by several senior officials of US Embassy in India, the sources said.

The officials flew into Srinagar’s high-security airport in a special US air force plane, from where they were flown to the Indian Army’s Kashmir headquarters in an army helicopter.

Blackwill was briefed at army headquarters by senior officers, including Lt. Gen. V.G. Patankar concerning the situation along the Line of Control (LoC).

Newspaper reports said Blackwill would assess the situation along the LoC today, where he would be flown in army helicopter. He would later fly to Jammu, where he is expected to meet the region’s new leader Mufti Muhammad Sayeed and Kashmir’s Governor G.C. Saxena.

Blackwill will not meet any separatist leaders of the region, unlike previous US envoys. Blackwill’s visit has been kept secret by officials here apparently for security reasons.

He was due to visit the state on Nov. 15, but postponed the trip, the first by the US ambassador since the new Kashmir government took charge on Nov. 2.

Meanwhile, A soldier was killed and six others injured in an overnight ambush by militants in Kashmir, while six rebels and two civilians were killed elsewhere, police said yesterday.

The militants, armed with rifles and grenades, ambushed an army convoy in the village of Reshipora, near the town of Banihal, 120 km south of Srinagar, late Sunday.

One soldier was killed on the spot while the others, including two officers, sustained serious injuries, a police spokesman said. He named the wounded officers as Lt. Col. R.M. Raina and Junior Commissioned Officer T.S. Raju.

Elsewhere, the Border Security Force (BSF) killed three high-ranking members of the hard-line militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba in the village of Hajan, 40 km north of Srinagar yesterday, a BSF spokesman said. He said the three “top militants” were killed in a six-hour battle on a hill.

The spokesman said one of the three slain militants was a Pakistani, while two others — Bashir Ahmad and Akbar Bhat — were locals. Ahmad was Lashkar’s “district commander” for Budgam.

“Both Ahmad and Bhat were carrying rewards of 100,000 rupees on their heads,” he said, adding Bhat was wanted for 32 killings, including three security force personnel. Three Kalashnikov rifles, one grenade launcher and four grenades were recovered from the scene.

BSF members killed another Lashkar militant in Sopore, 50 km north of Srinagar, the spokesman said.

In another incident, troops shot dead two militants in southern Poonch district yesterday, a police spokesman said.

He said suspected militants killed two civilians in northern Baramulla and Kupwara districts overnight, police said.