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JAMMU, India, Sunday (AFP)

The death toll in an attack by Islamic militants disguised as Hindu holy men on a shantytown in southern Kashmir has risen to 27, police said Sunday.

Among the dead were 13 women and a child, a police spokesman said.

At least 35 others were wounded, with nine still in critical condition, said doctors at the government Medical College in Jammu, Indian Kashmir's southern winter capital.

Police and witnesses said between three and five militants attacked the Qasim Nagar slum area on the outskirts of Jammu Saturday evening while slumdwellers were watching the televised cricket match between India and England.

According to Jammu deputy inspector of police, Dilbagh Singh, the attackers, carrying bags and dressed in the garb of sadhus (holy men), lobbed grenades into the crowd before opening fire with Kalashnikovs.

Witnesses said the attackers invaded two small temples where they continued firing before making off into the nearby Bathindi forests.

A manhunt continued through the night, with residents reporting the sound of exploding grenades and the crackle of automatic gunfire in the forests until early morning. As day broke, Kashmir governor G.C. Saxena accompanied by senior police officials visited the scene of the attack.

They found blood stains in the narrow alleys of the shantytown, with large groups of women wailing over the dead. Police then held a high-level meeting at which it was decided that all police posts in the area would be reinforced and that further security force members would be drafted in to help in the search for the attackers. Police blamed the attack on the Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is accused by India of attacking its national parliament on December 13 in which 14 people were killed.

The attack is likely to stoke tensions between neighbouring nuclear powers India and Pakistan, locked in a military standoff for more than six months over the disputed Himalayan region that has raised fears of war.

"Our police team has gone to the spot and has confirmed that it's a militant act," a police official told Reuters in the city, in the mainly Hindu south of India's only Muslim majority state.

No one has so far claimed responsibility for the killings and there was no independent confirmation it was carried out by Islamic militants fighting Indian rule in Jammu and Kashmir.

At least a dozen groups are fighting Indian rule in the state, which covers about 45 percent of Kashmir. Pakistan controls another third of Kashmir and China the rest.

Earlier India's foreign minister on Saturday reiterated there would be no talks with Pakistan until it stopped the infiltration of militants into Indian Kashmir and dismantled training camps on its side of the disputed region, the Press Trust of India reported. Responding to a question on the possibility of a dialogue between the two nations, Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha said: "Absolutely no until circumstances are created wherein Pakistan takes worthwhile steps to dismantle infrastructures of 'terrorism' which Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf has announced," said Sinha, newly appointed to the post.

Meanwhile Shops and businesses downed shutters in Srinagar, the summer capital of India's disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir, in response to a strike call by separatists to honour Kashmiri "martyrs".

The All Parties Hurriyat (Freedom) Conference called the strike to mark the anniversary of July 13, 1931, when police in Srinagar shot dead dozens of demonstrators protesting against a Hindu ruler of Jammu and Kashmir, then an independent state. "The Hurriyat pays glowing tributes to martyrs of 1931 and thousands of others who laid down their lives in Kashmir's freedom struggle. We will take their mission to the logical end," the Hurriyat said in a statement.

In a separate statement, a banned Pakistan-based separatist rebel group warned young Kashmiris against joining the Indian army in the state, which is at the heart of a military standoff between nuclear-armed neighbours and rivals India and Pakistan.

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