Crime & Justice

At least 2 killed, 5 injured in series of militant attacks in Indian Kashmir

Srinagar, India Apr 4 (EFE).- At least two people, including a suspected militant, were killed and five others injured in a series of insurgent attacks over the past 24 hours in the disputed India-administered Kashmir region, authorities said on Monday.

The five wounded include four non-Kashmiri migrant workers, a demographic group that has faced growing violence in the region in recent days.

On Monday, a group of militants attacked two migrants – originally from the northern Indian state of Bihar – in Kashmir’s southern Pulwama district.

A police officer told EFE on the condition of anonymity that the wounded have been identified as Patlashwar Kumar and Joko Chowdary.

“The injured workers have been hospitalized,” the officer said.

This was the second attack against non-Kashmiri workers in 24 hours, in a region which has witnessed repeated attacks against migrants and minority communities since the Indian government revoked its semi-autonomous status in 2019.

On Sunday, two other workers from the northern state of Punjab were also attacked in Pulwama in an insurgent attack and had to be hospitalized, a police source said.

Following the attacks on migrants, on Monday two members of the Indian armed forces were attacked in the Maisuma area of regional capital Srinagar.

An officer of the Central Reserve Police Force was killed in the attack, while another was injured, an official told EFE from the Srinagar police control room, adding that security forces were looking for clues to identify the insurgents involved in the incident.

Meanwhile the Indian army said in a statement that an insurgent was killed while trying to cross the Line of Control, the de-facto border between India and Pakistan in the disputed Kashmir region.

In the recent past, several targeted attacks against minorities in India-administered Kashmir have been claimed by a little known separatist group Tehreek Resistance Force, which has been linked by Indian authorities to Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Thousands of Kashmiris, many of them Hindus, had fled the Kashmir valley in a mass exodus in the 1980s after a series of attacks by insurgents against religious minorities.

Situated in the foothills of the Himalayas, Kashmir is one of the few Indian regions with a Muslim-majority population, and has been the center of a sovereignty dispute with neighboring Pakistan since the subcontinent was divided in 1947 along with its independence from the British Empire.

Tensions rose further when New Delhi revoked the semi-autonomous status of the India-Administered Kashmir in 2019 and divided it into two federally-controlled territories. EFE

sa-daa/ia

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