Indian soldier, suspected militant killed in Kashmir

Separate firefights in Indian-administered Kashmir killed a soldier and a suspected militant near the disputed territory’s militarized unofficial frontier with Pakistan, India’s military said Wednesday.

Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947, and each side claims it in full.

The soldier was the 10th killed in the area this month following several deadly militant attacks on a southern Hindu-dominated part of the otherwise Muslim-majority region.

He died after a clash with a group of militants attempting to cross over the Line of Control from the Pakistan side at Poonch early on Tuesday morning, the Indian military’s White Knight Corps said in a post on social media platform X.

The army offered its “deepest condolences” to the slain soldier’s family.

The next morning Indian troops killed a suspected militant in a separate clash near the frontier at Kupwara after they observed “suspicious movement”, the army said in a statement posted on X.

“In the ensuing fire fight one terrorist has been eliminated,” the army said in a statement.

Suspected rebels have mounted a string of attacks on Indian soldiers in Kashmir over the past few months.

India’s military has deployed hundreds of special forces commandoes, drones, helicopters and sniffer dogs in the region’s south to hunt militants in dense forests and remote caves.

It has also begun setting up new posts and camps in response to the attacks.

Last week five Indian soldiers were killed during a militant attack in a forest, following another attack days earlier near the border which killed four troops.

Nine Indian Hindu pilgrims were killed and dozens more wounded in June when a gunman opened fire on a bus carrying them from a shrine in Reasi district.

Rebel groups demanding Independence for Kashmir or its merger with Pakistan have been fighting Indian soldiers since 1989.

The conflict has killed tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and rebels.

India and Pakistan accuse each other of stoking militancy and espionage to undermine each other, and the nuclear-armed rivals have fought multiple conflicts for control of the region.