Government forces shot dead a youth in Indian Kashmir Monday during protests following an overnight gunbattle in which one suspected rebel was killed and another was believed to have escaped.

The incident happened in the volatile town of Sopore, 45 kilometers (30 miles) southwest of the main city of Srinagar, during protests by residents at the end of the gunbattle which had started Sunday evening, a police officer said.

Indian law enforcement and justice authorities have shirked their responsibility to fight sex attacks, a U.N. child rights watchdog said on Thursday, amid uproar over the horrific gang-rape and lynching of two girls.

"There has been a dereliction of duty in relation to rape cases," said Benyam Mezmur, deputy chairman of the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child.

Three separatist rebels were killed Thursday in a gunbattle with government forces in disputed Indian Kashmir that also left two soldiers wounded, police said.

The gun battle started late afternoon after government forces laid siege to a house in Tral, 45 kilometers (28 miles) southeast of the main city of Srinagar, from where the hiding rebels tried to escape.

India's new government struggled Thursday to make headway in its first foreign crisis as it tried to secure the release of 40 construction workers being held in war-torn Iraq, home to some 10,000 Indian expatriates.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has already dispatched a former ambassador to Baghdad to coordinate rescue efforts while the chief minister of Punjab province -- where most of the workers hail from -- has said he is willing to pay a ransom to gain their freedom.

India said Thursday it knows the location of its 40 construction workers abducted in violence-torn Iraq, as several of their families said they have spoken with the captured men.

Armed militants abducted the workers on Monday from a stadium where they were working in the northern city of Mosul but no demands for ransom have been made, the Iraqi Red Crescent Society told AFP.

Forty Indian construction workers have been abducted in violence-hit northern Iraq but no ransom demands have been made, the foreign ministry said on Wednesday.

The group had been working for a construction company in the city of Mosul, which has been overrun by militants waging a major offensive in Iraq, said foreign ministry spokesman Syed Akbaruddin.

Forty Indian employees stranded in violence-hit Iraq are "uncontactable," the foreign ministry said Wednesday, with a newspaper reporting the construction workers have been kidnapped. 

A ministry spokesman said he could not confirm the report in the Times of India that insurgents have abducted the 40 workers in the northern city of Mosul amid a deteriorating security situation.

An Indian contractor with the UNAMID peacekeeping mission in Sudan's troubled Darfur region has been freed after 94 days in captivity, a statement said on Friday.

The African Union-United Nations Mission in Darfur said Irfan Jaffery, who was kidnapped on March 11, was released on Thursday in Kabkabiya.

Pakistan accused Indian troops on Friday of wounding two civilians, including a seven-year-old boy, in separate incidents of "unprovoked firing" from across the de facto border in the disputed Kashmir region.

India's army in turn blamed Pakistan for firing on its troops, alleging its arch-rival and neighbor had breached a ceasefire.

An Indian woman said Thursday she was gang-raped by four officers at a police station, the latest in a string of shocking sex attacks in the troubled state of Uttar Pradesh.

The woman said she had gone to the station overnight on Monday in the state's Hamirpur district to seek her husband's release when she was attacked.