A teenaged girl and three Indian security troops were killed and 30 others wounded in attacks by Kashmiri nationalists fightin Indian-rul across Kashmir. The report by India police on Wednesday comes ahead of a visit by the U.S. secretary of state to India and Pakistan.

Colin Powell is due to arrive this weekend to calm tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbors over the decades-old dispute in the Kashmir region.

Two Indian paramilitary soldiers including an officer were killed Wednesday when suspected nationalist fighters ambushed a security patrol in southern Kashmir, an Indian police officer said.

He said security forces laid siege immediately after the ambush in Kulgam area south of Srinagar, summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir, and started house-to-house searches. A policeman was shot dead elsewhere in the bloodied region.

India has said it would not end its huge military deployment along the border with Pakistan until it was convinced the neighbor had stopped what New Delhi called trans-border terrorism in Kashmir.

Kashmiri nationalist fighters also lobbed a grenade at a security post outside the tax office in the heart of Srinagar Wednesday, wounding three paramilitary Indian troops.

A teenaged girl was killed Tuesday and 27 people wounded when a grenade went off in a crowded marketplace in Rajouri, southwest of Srinagar.

Pakistan says incursions by Kashmiri nationalists from its territory into Indian Kashmir have stopped, but Indian authorities say violence has resumed in recent weeks after a brief lull.

India has rejected a Pakistani proposal to deploy an international monitoring force along the common border between the two countries and wants a joint Pakistani-Indian force-a proposal rejected by Islamabad.

PHOTO CAPTION

Indian paramilitary troopers stand guard near a queue of Hindu pilgrims in Jammu, winter capital of the northern State of Jammu and Kashmir, July 24, 2002. (Kamal Kishore/Reuter