Captain among five security men killed in IIOJ&K

SRINAGAR: Five security personnel were killed in a firefight with gunmen in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu & Kashmir (IIOJ&K). Security sources said the those fighting Indian government had made a “tactical shift” in attacks.

The clash brings the number of soldiers and police killed this year to 17.

A security official, who asked not to be named, said fighters had shifted operations from the mainly Muslim Kashmir valley to the Hindu-dominated southern Jammu area, where “counterinsurgency measures are not as strong”.

The Indian army’s 16 Corps said security forces had launched an operation in the Doda forest on Monday evening, some 135 kilometres southeast of the territory’s capital Srinagar, in the Jammu area. A “heavy firefight ensued,” the army said, saying four men were killed, including a captain.

A police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP a police officer also died of his wounds, adding two other soldiers had been hospitalised.

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

Reinforcements were deployed to track the gunmen in the forested mountains.

This year, 61 people have been killed -- including 17 civilians, 17 members of the security forces, and 27 fighters , according to the New Delhi-based South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), which tracks the violence.

That compares to 132 people killed in 2023, including 12 civilians, 33 security officers and 87 militants, according to SATP data.

This year, almost all the soldiers killed were in Jammu, while last year almost all were killed in the Kashmir valley.

Monday´s clash came a day after the Indian army said it killed three suspected fighters as they tried to cross from the heavily militarised dividing line in Kupwara district.