Nine people, including a pro-India politician and two Muslim women, died in fresh violence in insurgency-racked Indian Kashmir, police said yesterday. Kashmiri rebels shot Farooq Zargar, a senior opposition National Conference party leader, in downtown Srinagar. He died two hours later in hospital. "Zargar was shot at close range at a relative's residence" where he had gone to mourn a family member's death, a police spokesman said. There has been a series of attacks in recent months on leaders and activists of the National Conference, Kashmir's main opposition party, which ruled the state for most of its history since India's independence from Britain in 1947.In other violence, a soldier and a militant died in a shootout while two Muslim women and a civilian were killed in crossfire near southern Tral town, 40 kilometres south of Srinagar. In northern Sopore town, rebels killed a soldier in an ambush. Kashmir's key rebel group Hizbul Mujahedin claimed responsibility for that attack in telephone calls to local media. Indian troops shot dead two more rebels in southern districts of Doda and Udhampur on Tuesday night and yesterday.