NEW DELHI:At least three suspected rebel fighters and one Indian soldier have been killed in separate firefights in Indian-administered Kashmir less than a week after Interior Minister Amit Shah visited the disputed territory.
The Indian army said on Saturday that Indian soldiers killed three fighters in a gun battle that began on Wednesday in a remote forest in Kishtwar in southern Kashmir. Senior Indian army official Brigadier JBS Rathi said troops had displayed “great tactical acumen”.
“In the gun battle, three terrorists were neutralised,” he told reporters on Saturday in a commonly used term for rebels opposed to Indian rule in Kashmir. Weapons and “war-like stores” were recovered from the site, the army’s White Knight Corps posted on social media platform X. A soldier was killed in a separate incident late on Friday night in Sunderbani district along the Line of Control (LoC), the de facto border that cuts Indian-administered Kashmir into two. Muslim-majority Kashmir has been divided between nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan since their independence in 1947, with both claiming the territory in full but governing only part of it. (Agencies)