India says captures Pakistani militant in Kashmir after attack

Indian forces captured a Pakistani militant on Wednesday after a deadly attack on a military convoy in the disputed Kashmir region, Indian officials said.

The accusation could further raise tension between the nuclear-armed neighbours following a recent attack on an Indian police station in which seven people were killed and intermittent clashes on their disputed border in Kashmir.

A group of militants attacked an army convoy in the south of Jammu and Kashmir state earlier on Wednesday, killing two soldiers and wounding eight.

The militants fled into forest, taking three passersby hostage. Soldiers later stormed a hilltop school where they were holed up, killing two of them and capturing one, officials said.

"In our preliminary questioning, he has said he is from Faisalabad, Pakistan," Danish Rana, inspector general of police, told reporters. He identified the militant as Usman, 22.

"We are going to find out what route he has taken, what was the target," he said.

India has long accused Pakistan of pushing separatist Muslim militants into India's part of Kashmir to foment revolt in India's only Muslim-majority region, which both countries claim.

Muslim Pakistan says it only gives moral and diplomatic support to the Kashmiri people in their struggle for self-determination.

Last week, gunmen stormed a police station and killed seven people in Punjab, south of Kashmir. India said the gunmen had come from Pakistan, according to an analysis of a GPS tracking device they carried.

The government had ordered security forces to try to take the militants holed up in the police station alive to nail down evidence of their identities. But the men were killed in the day-long operation.

"Taking a man alive is a significant breakthrough. We need to know who these people are," said A.S. Dulat, former head of India's external spy agency.

Pakistan rejected the assertion that the gunmen involved in the Punjab attack came from Pakistan, calling it "unsubstantiated and unwarranted".

There was no immediate word from Pakistan on the gunman captured on Wednesday.

In 2008, India arrested a lone member of a 10-strong group that carried out attacks in the city of Mumbai in which 166 people were killed. Authorities used his testimony to show that the assault was plotted by the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LET) militant group. The gunman was later executed.

Later this month, national security advisers from the two sides are due to meet to discuss terrorism.