Pakistan

"The fighting erupted when Indian troops ringed the area on a tip-off," spokesman Colonel Mukhtair Singh said. The rebels opened fire in a vain attempt to break the cordon. "All three militants holed up in the area were killed."

Indian soldiers killed four more rebels in the Kreeri area of northern Baramulla district Friday, Singh said. The fighting erupted when soldiers closed in on a rebel hideout in the area. Both Kupwara and Baramulla districts border Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

Police said suspected militants shot dead three Muslims in the districts of Pulwama, Udhampur and Kupwara overnight and on Friday. One of the victims was a member of pro-government militant group Ikhwan.

Some 390 people have died in Kashmir since top rebel commander Gazi Baba was gunned down by Indian troops on August 30. More than 39,500 people have died in Indian Kashmir since the eruption of an anti-Indian insurgency in 1989. Separatists put the toll between 80,000 and 100,000.

Meanwhile, a Muslim civilian died overnight when mortar rounds and artillery shells fired by Pakistani troops from across the Line of Control (LoC) – a ceasefire line that splits Kashmir between hostile neighbors India and Pakistan – hit villages in the Indian-administered sector, police said. The death was reported in the northeastern Kargil sector of Kashmir, a police spokesman said. He said Indian troops returned fire. The exchanges along the LoC have increased in the past fortnight, forcing people living closer to border villages on both sides to flee

In the northwestern Tangdar sector overnight Pakistani shelling damaged a local telephone exchange, a school building, three shops and four houses, a police spokesman said. Indian troops retaliated "effectively". Police said residents took refuge in underground bunkers and ground floors of their houses.

India and Pakistan routinely exchange fire along the LoC, with some 38 civilians and 27 security force personnel having died in the cross-border exchanges in Indian Kashmir between January and September 15 this year. Some 130 civilians and 37 security force personnel were injured during this period, according to police records, and 127 houses have been damaged.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf recently proposed a ceasefire along the LoC but New Delhi rejected the offer as "propaganda".

Some 25,000 foreign students have moved to Indian seminaries due to the Pakistani government's action against Islamic schools, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal head Maulana Shah Ahmad Noorani said yesterday. Addressing a Jamiat-e-Ulema Pakistan (JUP) convention, he said Pakistan recently deported 10,000 foreign students and now students prefer India to Pakistan. He asserted that the Indian government would try to malign Pakistan and that Indian propaganda could influence these students.

Mr Noorani believes that the war between Islam and the United States has begun and Pakistan is a US ally in this war. Pakistani troops should not be sent to the US because they are warriors of Islam and therefore cannot fight for 'infidels'. He demanded Pakistan send troops to the Middle East to fight against Israel. Iraq and Afghanistan would prove a graveyard for US troops.

General (retd) KM Azhar, Pir Ejaz Hashmi, Qari Zawar Bahadur, Allama Syed Shabiar Hashmi, Abdul Rehman Rajput, Sahibzada Muhammad Zubiar Alvarri and Dr Ashraf Asif Jillali also spoke on the occasion. The convention passed three resolutions demanding the rescinding of the Legal Framework Order, reductions in the prices of essential commodities and United Nations pressure on the US to announce a timetable for the transfer of power in Iraq.