SRINAGAR, 15 November 2004 — Eid Al-Fitr festivities in Kashmir were marred by an attack launched by rebels who killed three policemen as they guarded a Hindu village that witnessed a massacre in 2003, police said yesterday.

The militants stormed the police post late Saturday in Nadimarg, 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Srinagar, summer capital of India’s only Muslim majority state where a revolt against New Delhi’s rule has raged since 1989.

“The area has been sealed off and searches launched to arrest the militants,” a police spokesman told AFP.

The police post was set up to protect the few Hindu families remaining in Nadimarg where 24 people, including women and children, were killed in March 2003 by suspected militants clad in Indian Army uniforms.

The villagers, known as Kashmiri Pandits, were dragged from their homes and shot to death.

The raid on the police post occurred on the eve of Eid Al-Fitr which marks the end of fasting month of Ramadan.

The attack on the post shattered a usually peaceful few days leading up to the festival in the region where tens of thousands of people have died in the insurgency.

More than 40,000 people thronged Kashmir’s main mosque in Srinagar yesterday to pray for peace. Eid was being marked yesterday in the Himalayan region of Kashmir while Muslims elsewhere in India will celebrate the festival today.

Hopes for peace have been buoyed by last week’s announcement of a cut in troops in Indian Kashmir by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and a nascent peace process under way between India and Pakistan over the future of the disputed region.

“India’s announcement is a real Eid gift to us,” said Imtiaz Wani, a bank employee.

The nuclear-armed neighbors, who have fought two of their three wars over the Himalayan region, hold it in part but claim it in full. India accuses Pakistan of arming the militant groups, a charge Islamabad denies.

Most of the dozen rebel groups in Indian Kashmir are fighting for its merger with Islamic Pakistan. A couple of smaller ones are fighting for Kashmir’s independence from mainly Hindu India.

Kashmiri Pandits, residents of the region for centuries, have often been targeted by suspected rebels, causing thousands to flee. The Jammu and Kashmir government has been seeking to persuade them to return to their homes.

At least 40,000 people have died in separatist-related violence since 1989. Separatist groups say the death toll is at least double that number.

— With input from agencies