21-hour Kashmir hotel standoff leaves 7 dead

(5 Oct 2006) SHOTLIST
1. Paramilitary soldiers standing, pan to soldiers sheltering from gunfire
SOUNDUP of gunfire
2. Medium shot of hotel where militants were holed up
3. Zoom in to soldiers at window
4. Paramilitary soldiers in position
5. Various of soldier firing at militant trying to escape,
SOUNDUP of heavy gunfire
6. Body lying on the road
STORYLINE :
Two suspected Islamic militants and a policemen were killed on Thursday in a fierce gun battle that ended a 21-hour standoff in Indian Kashmir's main city of Srinagar.
The gunmen were shot as they tried to flee from a hotel in the Lal Crowk area.
The standoff with the suspected militants began at noon on Wednesday when they opened fire on a building on a nearby paramilitary base.
Police laid siege to the hotel and tried to storm it after several hours, but were unable to dislodge the gunmen.`
Three officers were killed in the initial assault and another died later, according to a member of the security forces operating at the scene.
Thirteen other people including several civilians were reported wounded in the fray.
At nightfall, police called off their attempted assault and took up positions around the hotel.
Throughout the siege the gunmen and security forces exchanged gunfire and lobbed grenades at each other, forcing shops and business in the central market area to shut down.
Security forces said they were hampered in their attempt to end the standoff because they were restricted to using light arms out of fears the hotel could catch fire.
The local Current News Service quoted an unidentified man, claiming to be a spokesman for the Kashmiri militant group Al-Mansorian, as saying three of its men had carried out the hotel takeover.
Anti-India sentiment runs high in Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state, where most people favour independence from Hindu-majority India or a merger with mostly Muslim Pakistan.
Kashmir is split between India and Pakistan, but both countries claim the Himalayan territory in its entirety.
More than a dozen Islamic rebel groups have been fighting security forces in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir since 1989. At least 68-thousand people, most of them civilians, have died in the conflict.

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