India test fires anti-tank missile

India's defense minister says troops will remain on the borders while militant activities inside Kashmir continue

NEW DELHI, India -- India has test fired two heat-seeking anti-tank missiles but denied the timing was connected to the tensions with neighboring Pakistan.

Defense ministry spokesman P.K. Bandopadhyaya said the Cobra, or Nag, test firing, from off the coast of eastern Orissa state Friday, was a routine part of India's missile development program.

Bandopadhyaya told The Associated Press: "It's an all-weather missile and is capable of day and night operations," he said.

The test came amid an easing of tensions between India and Pakistan over the disputed Kashmir region following intense international diplomacy.

But the two nuclear-armed rivals still have more than a million troops along their border in their dispute over the divided Himalayan territory of Kashmir, and India has again ruled out an immediate withdrawal of troops from the border. (Maps and military)

Despite the reducing tensions there has been continued clashes along the Line of Control (LoC), which divides the disputed territory of Kashmir.

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A sniper opened fire on a truck in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, killing the driver and 9 passengers.

The sniper's fire sent the truck plunging into the Neelum Valley, 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Muzafarrabad, the capital of the Pakistan section of disputed Kashmir, according to Associated Press reports.

Along with the driver, nine passengers were killed and 12 injured.

The sniper fire came amid shelling late Thursday by Indian troops around Shah Kot village on the Line of Control, a Pakistan military official told AP.

Pakistani troops responded to the Indian shelling with artillery fire, with the firing ceasing soon afterwards, officials said.

India and Pakistan massed nearly a million troops along the LoC in the weeks afetr an attack on India's Parliament on December 13.

It is the largest mobilization of troops on the subcontinent since the two countries last went to war in 1971. (Timeline)

New Delhi has blamed the attack on Kashmiri separatists operating from Pakistani-controlled territory with backing from Islamabad.

Pakistan has rejected the charges, saying it only gives moral support to groups fighting what it calls a "liberation struggle" for the Kashmiri people.

The dispute pushed the nuclear-armed neighbors to the brink of war, although the threat has subsided in recent weeks following intense diplomacy by the United States and others.

India has long maintained that any scaling down of tensions between the two arch-rivals is dependent on Pakistan's President Gen. Pervez Musharraf making good on promises that militant infiltration in the Kashmir region would be curtailed.

India's defense minister George Fernandes told journalists on Thursday that while the infiltration by Pakistan-based militants across the Line of Control seemed to be slowing down, there was still no let-up of militant activities inside Kashmir. (Incursions 'nearly over')

Indian police said an Indian soldier and two suspected Islamic militants were killed in one of two gunbattles in Indian-controlled Kashmir on Thursday.