Indian security forces have shot dead 10 Muslim separatist militants in different encounters in the troubled Himalayan region of Kashmir, police said Tuesday.
Two separatist militants were shot dead by army counter-insurgency troops in a three-hour long encounter at Kreeri, 35 kilometres (22 miles) north of Kashmir's summer capital Srinagar late Monday, a police spokesman said.
A fire, sparked off by the gunfight, razed a building to the ground, the spokesman said.
"So far two bodies have been recovered from the debris," he said, adding that civilians in the building were evacuated before the gun battle.
Two other militants were shot dead by the Indian army overnight along the Line of Control (LoC) -- the defacto border that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan, the police spokesman said.
"The militants were killed once they entered this (Indian) side of Kashmir," he said.
Two more militants were killed overnight in Dumpora Mirmaidan village near Dooru, 75 kilometers (47 miles) south of Srinagar, police said.
During the exchange of fire, two houses and two cowsheds were also destroyed.
Elsewhere in Kashmir, four militants were killed in overnight encounters, the police spokesman said, two of them in the southern Poonch district.
Four Indian army soldiers were injured when militants ambushed their patrol overnight at Sogan in the northern Kashmir district of Kupwara, which borders Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
Two of the injured are in a serious condition, the spokesman.
The Jamiat-ul-Mujahedin militant group has claimed responsibility for the attack on the Indian army – Srinagar (AFP)
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