HELD KASHMIR: Indian troops shot dead six freedom fighters, including two senior members of Pakistan-based fighter groups, in separate gun battles, police said on Sunday.

After a fierce firefight, soldiers shot dead two "divisional commanders" of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad fighter groups in Sopore area of north Kashmir, a police spokesman said.

Another freedom fighter and one soldier were killed in a separate clash in a remote area, police said. They said Indian soldiers also killed three suspected freedom fighters late on Saturday when they tried to sneak into Kashmir, northwest of Srinagar, Kashmir's summer capital.

New Delhi says Islamist guerrillas regularly slip into India under cover of shooting by Pakistani troops to join an anti-Indian insurgency in Kashmir. Islamabad denies the charge. The latest clashes came on a day when police had to fire teargas shells to disperse hundreds of stone-throwing demonstrators protesting against Indian rule in Kashmir.

At least five policemen and three protesters were injured in day-long clashes in many parts of Srinagar, police said. A dispute over forestland near a Hindu shrine has sharply divided Hindu-majority Jammu and mainly Muslim Kashmir, the two main parts of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.

Government forces in the Muslim-majority Kashmir Valley have killed at least 36 protesters since last month and 1,000injured in some of the largest pro-independence rallies since are volt against New Delhi's rule began in 1989.