ISLAMABAD, 6 December 2003 — Following the lead of the federal government, officials in Azad Kashmir have banned six militant groups, including one accused of staging a deadly terrorist attack on India’s Parliament two years ago, officials said yesterday.

Five of the rebel groups had been banned before and responded by renaming themselves. The sixth is a pro-Taleban group with offices in Pakistan and Britain.

The new bans imposed Thursday in Pakistan’s portion of Kashmir, which is partly autonomous from the central government, were the latest in a series of confidence-building measures taken by Pakistan and India to improve strained relations.

The Kashmir offices of the banned groups also are being closed, said the region’s deputy commissioner, Ahsan Khalid Kiyani.

Last month, each side agreed to a cease-fire along the heavily armed border in the Himalayan region. Fourteen years of fighting, mostly between separatist rebels and Indian forces in India’s Jammu-Kashmir state, have killed about 65,000 people.

Pakistan’s Interior Ministry said yesterday it had asked officials in Kashmir to move against the six groups banned by President Gen. Pervez Musharraf last month.

“We will not allow banned groups to operate in our controlled areas,” said Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, a senior official at the ministry in Islamabad, the national capital.

The six militant groups that were banned by Kashmir are Tehreek-e-Islami Pakistan, Millat-e-Islami, Khudam ul-Islam, Hezbul Tehrir, Jamiat ul-Furqan, and Jamiat ul-Ansar.

Meanwhile, a historic cease-fire between Indian and Pakistani forces in divided Kashmir has lasted 10 days, but failed to convince refugees to return to their homes on the heavily militarized border.

“Unless we are sure that this cease-fire would hold for long we cannot go back,” said Mukhtiar Hussain Shah, 45, one of 1,132 refugees in a camp near the town of Garhi Dopatta in Pakistani-administered Kashmir.

The ragged Zafar camp, 25 kilometers (15 miles) south of the main city of Muzaffarabad, houses 200 families who fled heavy shelling by Indian troops in valleys close to the dividing Line of Control (LOC) in August 1998.

Shah, who runs a grocery store in the camp, said refugees were too frightened to return home as they did not believe the cease-fire would last.

Pakistan and India began their first full cease-fire on Nov. 26 along their Kashmir borders, including the LOC, a de facto frontier heavily scarred by years of artillery duels between rival troops.

The move was the latest in a series of fence-mending measures taken by the nuclear-armed rivals.

Shah said years of shelling had destroyed everything in his village, razed houses to the ground and rendered cultivable lands barren. “There is no electricity, no school and no water in our area. The government should first provide these facilities and then ask us to return,” he said.

“Under the prevailing circumstances, going back would mean that we are out of frying pan and into the fire.”

Fazal Qureshi, 50, said India had always avenged attacks on its forces by Kashmiri fighters by resorting to shelling civilian populations along the LOC.

“The mujahedeen (fighters) have vowed to continue the freedom struggle in Indian-held Kashmir. So I don’t think India would discontinue shelling for long,” Qureshi said.