Srinagar

Only a trickle of people in Srinagar, the main city in the Indian-held part of Kashmir, voted in state elections after a morning gun battle left two suspected Islamic militants dead. Turnout was 11% in Srinagar, but voters in the Jammu and Badgam regions of Jammu and Kashmir state were less daunted, boosting turnout in the three districts that voted to 42%.

Muslim separatist kidnapers killed the Hindu chief executive of a state-run watch factory Tuesday after the government rejected their demands to free three jailed militants, halt searches and end a curfew, police said. There was no word on the fate of two Muslim hostages also held by the Kashmir Students Liberation Front. Police said the bullet-riddled body of H. L.

Two Swedish engineers kidnaped three months ago by Muslim separatists in Kashmir said they escaped early Saturday while their captors were sleeping and hiked 15 miles to freedom. The two, Johan Jansson, 35, and Jan-Ole Loman, 37, turned themselves in to police in the village of Bijbehara, 25 miles south of the Kashmir capital of Srinagar.

A child was killed and 19 people, mostly security force personnel, were wounded in a string of explosions in the northern Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, police said. The child was killed and two others wounded when an explosive device went off in the Kupwara district northwest of Srinagar. Police said eight soldiers and a civilian were injured when an army vehicle ran over a land mine north of Srinagar, the state's summer capital.

A grenade tied to a dog's neck exploded Friday in a shopping area in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir, wounding four people, police said. The blast in Sopur, about 30 miles north of Srinagar, missed its apparent target: a paramilitary guard post outside a government hospital, officer Junaid Ahmad said. Srinagar is the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir state. The wounded were treated at a local hospital and released. The explosion killed the dog instantly.

At least 300 people have been detained amid extraordinary security precautions ahead of this week's launch of bus service across the Kashmir region claimed by India and Pakistan, an Indian security official said. The bus service will connect Srinagar and Muzaffarabad, the capitals of the Himalayan region divided for decades between the two countries. Authorities fear the buses could be attacked. The official said many of those arrested were former militants who had served time in prison.

Paramilitary troops in the Indian-held portion of Kashmir stormed a building that had been set ablaze by militants, rescuing almost all 70 workers inside. A soldier, a civilian and two militants were killed, police said. Three militants had seized the building in Srinagar, which houses the income tax office, and hurled a grenade that started the fire, a police officer said.

A grenade exploded outside a school in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir, killing two women and wounding at least 57 people, many of them schoolchildren and their parents, police said. The grenade was apparently thrown at a passing Border Security Force vehicle in central Srinagar but missed, officer Mohammed Hasib said. Police suspected Muslim rebels, but no group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack and most separatist parties condemned it.

Two men with grenades and automatic rifles stormed a paramilitary barracks in a converted hotel in the center of Srinagar, killing two soldiers and dying themselves in the battle, officials said. Thirteen soldiers were wounded, said a spokesman for the Central Reserve Police Force, which fights Islamic militants who seek to merge the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir with Pakistan or win its independence.

Police in India's Jammu and Kashmir state raided a girls high school and found a bomb-making laboratory, seizing explosives they said militants planned to use in the Himalayan region. Acting on a tip, police raided the Muslim Girls Public School in Srinagar and found at least four large bombs and sacks of land mines and other explosives in an unused part of the school.