Violence has escalated in India's troubled Kashmir state leaving 25 people dead.
Suspected Muslim militants have abducted and killed four Hindus and the army killed 12 people trying to cross illegally into Indian territory from Pakistan.
Security forces have fought a fierce gunbattle with rebels who abducted the Hindus in the Rajouri area, 60 miles north west of Jammu.
Five militants and one soldier have been killed in that incident.
The militants had abducted six Hindus from a village in Rajouri earlier. Two of them managed to escape, while the rest were killed. The bodies of the abducted Hindus were recovered from the shoot-out site.
In another part of the state, guerrillas killed three members of a family whom they accused of sheltering a government official in Bandipora town, 45 miles north of Srinagar, the state's summer capital, police said. Officials said the attackers were members of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyaba group.
Fears of more extremist attacks have increased in the Kashmiri capital as the deadline ended for women to start following an Islamic dress code ordered by a militant group.
Most women in Srinagar are trying to comply with the order even though some big separatist groups have opposed the imposition of a dress code. Earlier this month, suspected militants threw acid on the face of a schoolgirl and two teachers for not wearing veils and covering themselves from head to toe.
An armed Muslim insurgency in Kashmir has led to at least 35,000 deaths since it began in 1989. AFP