BHarwana
MODERATOR
- Joined
- Sep 24, 2016
- Messages
- 24,827
- Reaction score
- 20
- Country
- Location
NEW DELHI — Four Indian soldiers and four militants were killed in separate gun battles on Tuesday after security forces raided two villages in Indian-administered Kashmir, officials said.
One of the raids was conducted after soldiers received a tip that militants were hiding in a village in the Bandipora district. It was the latest in a series of operations aimed at extinguishing insurgent networks before the seasonal arrival of unrest in the summer.
Three fighters, who had taken cover in a home, forced their way through a security cordon by surrounding themselves with local civilians and attacked security forces with grenades and firearms, according to Nitish Kumar, deputy inspector general of the Jammu and Kashmir police.
One of the militants was killed and five soldiers were wounded in that battle, officials said.
On Tuesday afternoon, security forces killed three terrorists in Handwara, in northern Kashmir, according to Col. Rajesh Kalia, an army spokesman. An army major who was wounded later died in a hospital.
Similar raids have been staged every few days since the beginning of the year. With Tuesday’s clashes, at least 22 militants have been killed in 44 days, according to the Indian Army’s northern command.
The authorities are wary of a repeat of the waves of civil unrest that erupted in 2016, set off by the killing of a charismatic young militant leader last July. Nightly clashes between the police and stone-throwing crowds resulted in months of economic paralysis, scores of civilian deaths and hundreds of injuries from birdshot, which Indian troops in Kashmir fire to disperse crowds.
“It finally depends on the Kashmiri people,” Mr. Kumar said. “If the Kashmiri people want another hot summer, we will have it. If the Kashmiris think that this violence is useless, and they are getting no benefit out of it, it will not happen.”
In a raid on Saturday, the police discovered a mixed group of militants, including members of Hizbul Mujahedeen, a Kashmiri separatist group largely drawn from local youths, and Lashkar-e-Taiba, whose fighters typically come from Pakistan. Seven militants were hiding in a house that had been fitted with a false ceiling, allowing the militants to surprise Indian soldiers when they entered, killing two of them, officials said. Four militants were killed, and three escaped.
The two organizations have been coordinating for two years, exchanging recruits, weapons, tactics and guidance, said Ajai Shukla, a former army colonel who writes a column on defense affairs for The Business Standard, a daily newspaper.
He added that neither group had proven as challenging as the stone-throwing crowds that swelled in the region’s southern villages last summer, which he described as an “intifada.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/...est&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection&_r=0
