Indian soldiers Tuesday killed two suspected militants in Indian Kashmir after police and troops battled scores of stone-throwing residents who were trying to help the rebels escape, police said.

The soldiers came under fire after they surrounded Ratnipora village, 35 kilometers (21 miles) south of the main city of Srinagar, overnight Monday following a tip-off that militants were in the area.

A stampede outside a temple killed at least 11 pilgrims in eastern India early Monday after thousands tried to jump a queue that stretched for kilometers during a holy Hindu month, a police officer said.

Authorities said devotees who had massed outside overnight had rushed towards the Baidyanath Jyotirlinga temple complex in Jharkhand state after news circulated that the gates were opening.

An Indian soldier and two suspected militants were killed in Kashmir in two separate gun battles along the de facto border that divides the restive territory between India and Pakistan, police said Sunday.

The two militants died when a group of suspected armed rebels crossed the border into India and were intercepted by soldiers, triggering a gun battle in Keran, 150 kilometers (90 miles) northwest of Kashmir's main city of Srinagar.

Police in eastern India were searching Sunday for a woman described as a "village quack" and suspected of inciting the mob killing of five other women accused of witchcraft.

Police said the woman is thought to have stirred up an angry mob which lynched the five after blaming them for recent deaths in Kanjia village in Jharkhand state, some 30 kilometres (20 miles) from the state capital Ranchi.

Villagers in a rural part of eastern India have killed five women whom they accused of practicing witchcraft, police said Saturday.

Police in eastern Jharkhand state said a group of assailants dragged the women out of their huts and beat them to death at around midnight Friday in Kanjia village, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) from state capital Ranchi.

A train crushed six people, including three children, to death in eastern India Thursday in the second accident this week to hit the nation's crumbling rail network, a police officer said.

The train ran over the pedestrians as they were crossing the tracks at a village in West Bengal, about 350 kilometers (220 miles) north of the state capital Kolkata.

Suspected rebels killed two paramilitary soldiers and wounded another ten after attacking their convoy in disputed Indian Kashmir on Wednesday, a senior police officer said.

The militants fired on the convoy transporting Border Security Force (BSF) troops near the town of Udhampur, 250 kilometers (155 miles) south of the main city of Srinagar.

Two passenger trains derailed after flash floods struck a bridge they were crossing in central India, killing up to 27 people in the latest deadly accident on the nation's crumbling rail network.

Rescuers pulled scores of terrified passengers to safety after they became trapped in carriages that toppled over on the weakened and flooded tracks in Madhya Pradesh state, railway and government officials said.

Floods from days of torrential rain have now claimed at least 180 lives in India with one million people sheltering in relief camps after fleeing surging waters, officials said Tuesday.

Rivers have burst their banks, hitting thousands of villages in parts of West Bengal as well as northeastern Manipur state, where roads and bridges have been cut and communications were patchy.

Three civilians were killed Tuesday in heavy exchanges of fire between Indian and Pakistani troops along their border in the south of the disputed territory of Kashmir, officials from the rival sides said.

"One young man died during the shelling. We are asking residents in the area to remain confined to their homes," Danesh Rana, inspector general of police in the Indian-controlled part of the region, told AFP.