The New Nation - Internet Edition

Reuters, Srinagar

Four Indian soldiers and three Muslim militants were killed in gun battles across Kashmir on Monday, police said.

They said suspected militants also beheaded a Muslim villager suspecting him to be an informer of Indian troops.

Police said a firefight with separatist guerrillas broke out near the border with Pakistan in south Kashmir, where four soldiers were killed and two were wounded.

New Delhi says Muslim guerrillas regularly slip into Indian Kashmir, helped by constant firing by Pakistani troops to help them join an anti-Indian insurgency in the Himalayan region. Islamabad denies the charge.

Elsewhere three militants, including a senior "commander" of Kashmir's largest militant group, Hizbul Mujahideen, were killed in two separate gun battles with soldiers, police said.

The latest clashes came on a day when hundreds of students in Kashmir's main university protested against Indian rule.

At least 37 protesters have been killed by government forces since last month in the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley, scene of some of the biggest pro-independence rallies since a revolt against New Delhi's rule began in 1989.

Tens of thousands of people have been killed in Kashmir in nearly 20 years of violence, involving Indian troops and Muslim militants.