SRINAGAR, India -- Moslem militants shot and killed the director of Srinagar's government-run television station Tuesday just hours after radicals lynched a suspected government informant and nailed the victim's body to a tree.
Police said militants shot Lassa Kaul, 45, director of the government-run television station, at about 7:15 p.m. as he stepped from a vehicle in front of his home.
Members of Kaul's family heard the gunfire and found Kaul next to his vehicle. He was pronounced dead on arrival at a nearby hospital, police said.
Kaul is the most senior government official killed by radicals since widescale pro-secession violence erupted in the Kashmir Valley Jan. 20.
Militants, critical of the television station's news reports on pro-secession violence, had threatened Kaul with death, police said.
In a separate incident, Moslem militants lynched a suspected government informant and later nailed the body to a tree. The unidentified victim was the third suspected government informant to die at the hands of separatist radicals in the past three weeks.
Police said the body was found about 7 a.m. by residents in the Badgam district of Srinagar, the summer capital of northern India's Jammu and Kashmir state, 400 miles north of New Delhi.
Meanwhile, authorities relaxed their curfew for 12 hours, beginning at 5 a.m. Monday, but about half the businesses in Srinagar remained closed in apparent fear of more of the violence that has rocked it and other towns throughout the Kashmir Valley, witnesses said.
Police said militants hurled a bomb at a gasoline station about 9 a.m., heavily damaging the business, but reported no other explosions.
Tens of thousands of security and paramilitary forces are stationed throughout the valley to quell a general uprising against Indian rule.
More than 100 people have died since Jan. 20, most victims shot by security forces during anti-India, pro-secession demonstrations, according to official sources. The government puts the number of dead in the 30s.
Virtually all of the region's 3 million Moslems back the pro-secession movement. Kashmiris want to secede from India because they believe their collective interests have been neglected by the Hindu-dominated central government in New Delhi.
