A fresh gun battle between soldiers and suspected rebels erupted near an Indian army headquarters in Kashmir on Wednesday, wounding two soldiers, a defense spokesman said.

He said soldiers were fighting gunmen who had attacked a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) security post late on Tuesday and subsequently taken refuge in a house near the army headquarters in Srinagar, Kashmir's main city.

"Six civilians were evacuated from the house by the army early on Wednesday and operations were launched to flush out the militants," Lieutenant-Colonel Mukhtar Singh told Reuters.

The number of gunmen in the building, which also houses a local telephone exchange, was not known. One CRPF policeman was killed and two others wounded in Tuesday's gun battle.

A little-known Kashmiri militant group, al-Mansurain, called newspaper offices in Srinagar on Tuesday, claiming responsibility for the attack near the Indian army's 15th Corps headquarters.

Guerrillas fighting New Delhi's rule in the disputed territory have repeatedly targetted the heavily guarded headquarters and, in a major attack in 1999, killed the army spokesman in his office.

Tuesday's gun battle started on the same day the Jammu and Kashmir state government announced that militant violence had fallen since a new government came to power last November, promising to bring a "healing touch" to the state, at the heart of decades of enmity between India and Pakistan.

A dozen or so groups are fighting for Muslim-majority Kashmir's independence from predominantly Hindu India or merger with mostly Muslim Pakistan in a 14-year rebellion that has killed at least 40,000 people by official count. Separatists put the toll at 80,000.

India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars since independence over Kashmir and both of the nuclear-armed neighbors claim the Himalayan territory in its entirety. Most of it is divided between them, with China claiming a sliver.

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