Five law enforcement personnel and two suspected insurgents were killed this week in separate firefights in Indian-administered Kashmir, officials in the disputed region said Thursday.
Two Indian military officers and a police official carrying out a security operation in a forest area in south Kashmir were ambushed and killed on Wednesday. Two armed suspects opened fire on the soldiers.
Indian police in Kashmir said their forces had surrounded two men they said were members of the Pakistan-based Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Police forces continued their work “with unwavering determination,” he wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
Additionally, in the mountainous region of Rajouri (southern Indian Kashmir), four more people were killed on Tuesday – an Indian soldier, a policeman and two suspected insurgents – in a prolonged firefight.
The gunmen first shot dead an army sniffer dog leading soldiers towards the rebels.
Kashmir, where the majority of the population is Muslim, is divided between India and Pakistan, which since independence in 1947, has claimed sovereignty over the entire Himalayan region.
The rival countries have fought three wars for control of the region and an armed insurgency in the region led by India has left tens of thousands of people dead since 1989.
New Delhi accused Islamabad of encouraging the attack, but Pakistan denied this.
Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government revoked Jammu and Kashmir’s partial autonomous status in 2019.
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