India: 4 soldiers killed in Kashmir militant fighting

At least four Indian soldiers, including an officer, were killed in a gunfight with suspected rebels in an Indian-administered district in the disputed Kashmir region, the army said on Tuesday.

The shooting took place in the forests of the Doda district in the Jammu Division.

Another police officer also died later due to his wounds, the French AFP news agency cited an anonymous security source as saying.

The attack comes a day after the Indian army said it killed three suspected militants as they tried to cross from the Pakistan-controlled side of the highly-militarized dividing line.

What do we know about the attack?

Security forces had launched an operation some 135 kilometers (85 miles) southeast of the territory's capital Srinagar in the Jammu area on Monday evening. Militants ambushed the patrolling team, military officials said, with a firefight ensuing.

The soldiers "laid down their lives in the line of duty, while undertaking a counter terrorist operation in Doda in order to ensure peace in the region," the Indian military said in a statement posted on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.

Minister of Defense Rajnath Singh said he was "anguished to learn about the cowardly attack" on the soldiers and police who had made the "supreme sacrifice."

Additional security personnel were deployed in the area to track the shooters in the forested mountains.

Kashmir's top political official Manoj Sinha said forces would "avenge [the] death of our soldiers."

Jammu and Kashmir sees an uptick in militancy

This is the latest in a series of insurgent attacks in the region. It has brought the death toll of Indian security personnel killed in such attacks to over 10 this year.

Officials say the militants have made a "tactical shift" in attacks.

Militants have moved their operations from the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley to the Hindu-dominated southern Jammu region, where "counterinsurgency measures are not as strong," AFP quoted an unnamed official as saying.

"They have found a gap for sure," the region's chief of police, R.R. Swain, told reporters on Monday, referring to the infiltration of militants into the region. "We will deal with it."

Last week, five soldiers were killed in the nearby Kathua district.

Insurgency has bogged down the region since 1989, with rebels demanding an independent Kashmir or its merger with Pakistan.

Both India and Pakistan administer parts of the Kashmir region but both claim it in its entirety. India alleges that Pakistan sponsors militancy in the Indian-administered parts of Kashmir.

mfi/rmt (AFP, AP, Reuters)