Indian soldiers in Kashmir have shot dead five members of one of the guerrilla groups blamed by New Delhi for last month's suicide attack on its parliament.
A statement by the Border Security Force (BSF) said the rebels from the banned Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad were killed in a gun battle in Chrar-e-Sharief village, 20 miles west of Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir.
Acting on specific information that a group of Jaish-e-Mohammad militants were hiding in a village of Chrar-e-Sharief, BSF launched an operation, the statement said. "A BSF party asked them [militants] to surrender . . . but they declined," it said.
The raid on India's parliament has led India and Pakistan to a tense standoff along their border.
India, which accuses Pakistan of training and arming the rebels in Kashmir, has said there are no signs of a fundamental shift in Islamabad's support of guerrilla activity in Kashmir despite a crackdown on religious extremism.
Jaish-e-Mohammad and another Pakistan-based group, the Lashkar-e-Taiba, also blamed by New Delhi for the attack on its parliament, were among five militant Muslim groups banned by Pakistani President Gen Pervez Musharraf earlier this month.
