SRINAGAR, India -- A fresh surge in violence in Indian-ruled Kashmir has killed 19 people, highlighting the diplomatic minefield at the heart of decades of enmity between India and Pakistan.

Thursday's violence coincided with a call from the world's rich nations for Pakistan to halt terrorist activity from territory under its control and for both countries to discuss underlying issues dividing them.

But Kashmir's frontline militant group, Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, which claimed responsibility for one of the incidents, said further attacks would follow.

"We will continue to strike against so-called security forces and disrupt the sleep of the Indian security forces and their local henchmen in the state," a spokesman for the group said.

Police said 19 people, including eight Indian security force members, were killed and 26 wounded on Thursday in various incidents, which followed an easing of tension between the nuclear-armed neighbors.

Three soldiers were killed when an army vehicle ran over a landmine near Pahalgam, 100km (60 miles) southeast of Srinagar, summer capital of India's northern state of Jammu and Kashmir.

In a separate incident, suspected rebels lobbed a grenade in a crowded marketplace in the town of Anantnag, 55km (35 miles) south of Srinagar, injuring 22 people, a police official said.

"The target of the grenade was a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) patrol," the official told Reuters.

No group has claimed responsibility for the grenade attack.

Later on Thursday two policemen were killed and four injured when militants attacked a police patrol in downtown Srinagar, police said. A spokesman for a lesser known militant group Al-Madina regiment called newspapers in Srinagar and claimed responsibility.

Police also recovered five bullet-riddled bodies of Muslim villagers in Gulbadan forests of Shopian in south Kashmir.

"The dead include father and his son. Police are investigating," the official added.

Elsewhere three security force members and six militants died in shootouts across the disputed scenic region, police told Reuters.

Meanwhile, the Federal government said it had banned a militant outfit, Dukhtaran-e-Millat, under its tough anti-terror law.

About a dozen groups are battling Indian rule in Jammu and Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state, where officials say more than 33,000 people have been killed since a rebellion broke out in 1989. Separatists put the toll closer to 80,000.

India, which controls 45 percent of Kashmir, accuses Islamabad of arming Muslim militants and pushing them into Indian Kashmir to fight New Delhi's rule.

Pakistan denies the charge but President Pervez Musharraf has vowed to stop militant incursions across a cease-fire line dividing the disputed Himalayan region.

The two countries have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir since they won independence from Britain in 1947.