SRINAGAR/JAMMU, 4 December 2002 — The 24 hour long siege of a mosque in Sheikhgund village in southern Kashmir ended with the rebel holed up inside the mosque, surrendered late yesterday as 10 people died in violence elsewhere in Kashmir.
An army spokesman said the lone militant, who took shelter late Monday in the complex in Sheikhgund village in the southern district of Anantnag, gave himself up without a shot being fired.
Three militants were believed to have fled into the mosque when troops cordoned off Sheikhgund after learning of a rebel presence, spokesman Col. Mukhtair Singh said. But a police officer said later that fire had been coming from the mosque in only one direction, indicating that two militants had escaped.
Police also said yesterday that five rebels and five civilians were killed in separate overnight clashes in the Himalayan territory. Troops killed the five militants in three separate clashes near the township of Banihal and in the districts of Kupwara and Anantnag, a police spokesman said.
Two army soldiers were injured in one of the firefights, he said.
In southern Rajouri district, the police said militants killed two civilians by slitting their throats and murdered two more civilians in Kupwara and in Baramulla districts.
And soldiers shot dead a mentally-retarded civilian, mistaking him to be a militant, near a security camp in Kashmir. Two security force vehicles were also damaged by land mines, although no one was injured.
The siege and killings came as US Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill, on a fact-finding mission to Kashmir, called for an end to the rebellion in Kashmir.
“The United States and the international community cannot win the war against terrorism as long as terrorism is there in Jammu and Kashmir state,” Blackwill told reporters in Jammu.
Seven killed in cable car accident
Meanwhile, seven people were killed and two injured when a cable car carrying technicians and laborers working on a hydroelectric scheme in Kashmir plunged into a gorge, police said yesterday.
The accident occurred Monday night at the Baghlira hydroelectric scheme in southern Doda district, about 180 km from Jammu, a police spokesman said.
He said the cable snapped and the car plunged around 60 meters into a gorge.
