SRINAGAR (AFP) – Five Indian soldiers were killed in a firefight in Indian-held Kashmir on Monday. The clash brings the number of soldiers and police killed this year to 17.
Indian officials say Kashmiri fighters had made a “tactical shift” in attacks by moving operations from the mainly Muslim Srinagar valley to the Hindu-dominated southern Jammu area, where “counterinsurgency measures are not as strong”.
The Indian army’s 16 Corps said forces had launched an operation in the Doda forest on Monday evening, some 135 kilometres southeast of Srinagar, in the Jammu area. A “heavy firefight ensued”, the army said, saying four men were killed, including a captain.
A police officer also died of his wounds and two soldiers had been hospitalised.
Indian army chief Upendra Dwivedi sent his “deepest condolences” to the families of the men. Reinforcements were deployed to track the `gunmen’ in the forested mountains, an Indian official said.
This year, 61 people have been killed in Indian-held Kashmir — 17 civilians, 17 soldiers and 27 Kashmiri fighters, according to the New Delhi-based South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP).
That compares to 132 people killed last year — 12 civilians, 33 soldiers and 87 Kashmiris, according to SATP data.
This year, almost all the Indian soldiers killed were in Jammu, while last year almost all were killed in the Srinagar valley.
Monday’s clash came a day after the Indian army said it killed three fighters as they allegedly tried to cross the Line of Control in Kupwara district.
Last month, nine Hindu pilgrims were killed and dozens wounded when an unidentified man opened fire on a bus carrying them from a shrine in the southern Reasi area.
It was one of the deadliest attacks in years and the first on Hindu pilgrims in occupied Kashmir since 2017, when seven people were killed in another ambush on a bus.