A suspected militant was killed and seven members of security forces were wounded in clashes in Indian-administered Kashmir, police said yesterday.
The first incident occurred late on Tuesday night in Hiranagar, a village near the frontier with Pakistan, which, like India, claims the Himalayan region in full.
Security forces rushed to the border village, with a man killed in the resulting gunfight who police believed had crossed over from the Pakistan side.
Photo: AFP
“This appears to be a fresh infiltration in which one terrorist was killed and the search for one more is ongoing,” Anand Jain, a top police officer, told reporters.
Hours later, suspected rebels lobbed grenades and fired at an army checkpoint in the remote Doda area about 100km to the north, leaving six soldiers and a police officer wounded.
Six of the wounded were transported to a hospital for treatment, police senior superintendent Javaid Iqbal told reporters.
“A search operation is on in the forest area,” he added.
The incidents came days after a gunman opened fire bullets on a bus full of Indian pilgrims returning from a Hindu shrine in the southern Kashmir district of Reasi, leaving nine dead and dozens wounded.
Survivors at a hospital on Tuesday told reporters that the attacker continued firing on the bus for several minutes after it tumbled into a ravine.
Army special forces and police have launched a hunt in a vast forested area and released a sketch of the alleged attacker, announcing a reward of US$24,000 for information leading to his location.
India has about 500,000 soldiers permanently deployed in Kashmir.
The three back-to-back incidents follow an uptick in militant attacks in the southern Hindu-dominated areas of the Muslim-majority territory.
Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947 and the rivals have fought three wars over control of the territory.
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