Indian soldiers shot dead four suspected rebels Friday near the heavily militarized border in Kashmir as they tried to sneak in from the Pakistani side of the divided territory, an army spokesman said.

The group of armed men were intercepted by Indian soldiers when they crossed the Line of Control (LoC) early morning in Gurez, about 130 kilometers (80 miles) north of the main city of Srinagar.

Nepal on Thursday urged India to push for justice as it investigates a top Saudi diplomat accused of holding captive and raping two Nepalese maids, after he left the country under diplomatic immunity.

Majed Hassan Ashoor, the Saudi Embassy's First Secretary in New Delhi, is accused of beating and sexually abusing the two women, aged 30 and 50, while they were imprisoned in his apartment outside New Delhi. 

An American tourist has accused two men of raping her in the popular Himalayan hill station of Dharamsala in northern India, police said Thursday, the latest sex attack on a foreigner.

The 46-year-old woman has told police she was walking through a crowded market area of the town, famed for its Tibetan community and home to the Dalai Lama, on Tuesday evening when the attack occurred.

Indian-administered Kashmir largely shut down Wednesday after separatists called a strike in protest at the killing of three men whose bullet-riddled bodies were discovered in an orchard two days earlier.

Police say the deceased were local militants who were killed due to rivalry between different rebel factions in the conflict-stricken region, but separatist leaders say they died in police custody.

Two British women were killed and nine other passengers injured on Saturday when a train carrying tourists to the hill town of Shimla in northern India derailed, police said.

"Two British nationals have been killed," S.Z.H Zaidi, a senior police official for Himachal Pradesh state, told Agence France Presse.

A powerful explosion triggered by a gas cylinder tore through a packed restaurant in India on Saturday killing at least 85 people and wounding approximately 100 others, police said, in one of the worst such accidents in the country in recent memory. 

The restaurant building in central Madhya Pradesh state was being used to illegally store explosives which detonated in the blast, local authorities said, vastly amplifying its impact and destroying neighboring buildings.

Canada, India, Singapore and Egypt are "seriously" interested in buying France's two Mistral warships, a senior official has said, after Paris scrapped a deal to sell the vessels to Russia over the Ukraine crisis.

Louis Gautier, an official who advises the prime minister on defense and security matters, also told lawmakers this week that the cost of abandoning the agreement with Russia would be at least 1.1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) if the government did not find another buyer, according to a summary of his comments obtained by AFP Friday.

The bodies of six Indian seamen missing since their boat was apparently hit by Saudi-led coalition airstrikes in Yemen have been found and a seventh is still missing, New Delhi said Friday.

India's foreign ministry said Wednesday that boats carrying 21 Indian nationals had been hit as they traveled across the Red Sea to the Yemeni port of Mokha on Tuesday.

Fighting in Indian-administered Kashmir killed two soldiers and two suspected rebels Friday, as representatives from India and Pakistan met to discuss security on the disputed frontier.

The deaths were the latest to occur in recent weeks, which have seen an upsurge in firing by both sides across the heavily militarized border.

India called in the Saudi ambassador on Thursday to seek his cooperation with an investigation into allegations one of his diplomats repeatedly raped two Nepalese women, a foreign ministry spokesman said.

The women, aged 30 and 50, have filed complaints with police alleging the diplomat beat and sexually assaulted them while they were imprisoned in his apartment outside the Indian capital.