NEW DELHI (AP) — Two suspected militants were killed in a gunfight with government forces in Indian-controlled Kashmir, officials said Friday, while assailants killed two members of a government-sponsored militia elsewhere in the disputed region.
The region, divided between India and Pakistan but claimed by both in its entirety, has experienced an increase in violence in recent months.
The Indian military said a joint team of soldiers and police raided a village near northwestern Sopore town late Thursday following a tip about the presence of a group of militants.
The militants “fired indiscriminately” at the troops, leading to a gunbattle in which two were killed, the military said in a statement.
Troops were continuing to search the area, it said. There was no independent confirmation of the incident.
Meanwhile, assailants killed two members of a government-run militia called the “Village Defense Group” in the remote southern Kishtwar area late Thursday, officials said.
Police blamed rebels fighting against Indian rule in Kashmir for the killings.
The two, one of them a Hindu and another Muslim, were abducted from a forested area where they had gone to graze cattle on Thursday.
On Friday, hundreds of people at several places in Kishtwar and Jammu district took to the streets in protest at the killings, demanding the authorities arrest the culprits. Kishtwar also observed a shutdown on the instruction of a Hindu group, the Sanatan Dharam Sabha.
The Village Defense Group was initially formed in the 1990s to protect remote Himalayan villages against anti-India insurgents when government forces could not reach them quickly. As the insurgency waned in their areas and as some militia members gained notoriety for brutality and rights violations, the militia was largely disbanded.
However last year, after the killing of seven Hindus in two attacks in a remote mountainous village near the highly militarized Line of Control that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan, authorities revived the militia and began rearming and training thousands of villagers, including some teenagers.
The Kashmir Tigers, which Indian officials say is an offshoot of the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad militant group, claimed responsibility for the killings of the two in a statement on social media. The insurgent group also released photos of the two bloodied bodies.
The statement could not be independently verified.
Chief Minister Omar Abdullah condemned the attack. “I expect the security forces to move quickly to plug any gaps in our counter-terror grid & ensure that attacks like this stop completely,” he wrote on social medial platform X.
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.
India insists the Kashmir militancy is Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. Pakistan denies the charge, and many Kashmiris consider it a legitimate freedom struggle. Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict.