India says its troops killed 3 suspected militants in Kashmir fighting

SRINAGAR, India (AP) – Indian troops killed three suspected militants in a gunfight in a forested area in disputed Kashmir, officials said Monday.

The Indian military in a statement on social media said three militants were killed “in an intense firefight” in the forested area in Dachigam area, some 30 kilometers (19-miles) northeast of the region’s main city of Srinagar.

Police Inspector-General Vidhi Kumar Birdi told reporters that the joint operation by the military, paramilitary and police was still ongoing.

Officials did not give any other details. The Associated Press couldn’t independently verify the details.

Nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan each administer part of Himalayan Kashmir, but both claim the territory in its entirety. Militants in the Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir have been fighting New Delhi’s rule since 1989. Many Muslim Kashmiris support the rebels’ goal of uniting the territory, either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country. Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict.

Monday’s incident is the second major gunfight since a gun massacre in the region in April that killed 26 people, mostly Hindu tourists, in Indian-controlled Kashmir. That led to tit-for-tat military strikes by India and Pakistan that brought the nuclear-armed rivals to the brink of their third war over the region.

The Indian army also said in May that its soldiers killed three suspected militants in a gunfight.

Before the April gun massacre in the Kashmiri resort town of Pahalgam, the fighting had largely ebbed in the region’s Kashmir Valley, the heartland of anti-India rebellion and mainly shifted to mountainous areas of Jammu in the last few years.

The massacre increased tensions between India and Pakistan, leading to the worst military confrontation in decades and the death of dozens of people until a ceasefire was reached on May 10 after U.S mediation.

The region has simmered in anger since New Delhi ended the region’s semi-autonomy in 2019 and drastically curbed dissent, civil liberties and media freedoms while intensifying counterinsurgency operations.