Indian security forces shot dead seven Islamic militants in three separate overnight encounters in Indian-administered Kashmir, a police representative said on Friday.
The representative said personnel of the National Rifles, the Indian army’s counter-insurgency wing, gunned down three militants at Kaimoh village, near Bandipora township, 60km north of India Kashmir’s summer capital Srinagar.
Police said the firefight erupted when soldiers were trying to defuse a landmine planted by militants.
”As the troops started defusing it, the militants opened fire, resulting in a retaliation by the troops,” the police representative said.
”Three militants were killed while others fled the area later,” he said.
Two more militants were shot dead by the army, backed by counter-insurgency police, in a separate encounter overnight in an adjoining village.
In a third incident, police said Indian troops killed two militants in the village of Tris, Kandi in the northern district of Kupwara, which borders Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
All those killed belonged to Kashmir’s dominant militant group Hizbul Mujahedin and a Pakistan-based group Jaish-e-Mohammed, police said.
Jaish and another group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, are accused by India of an attack on its national parliament in December in which 14 people were killed.
The incident triggered a serious military stand-off between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.
Meanwhile, a civilian lost both his legs when he stepped on a landmine in the village of Warsun in Kupwara district, police said.
He was taken to hospital, where doctors amputated both his legs.
More than 35 000 people have died in Kashmir since the eruption of armed rebellion against Indian-rule in 1989. – Sapa-AFP