RECENT UPDATE! One Indian trooper killed in occupied Kashmir’s army camp attack
Armed men fired on an army camp in occupied Kashmir killing one trooper, claims authorities, two weeks after a similar fatal assault that impaled tensions between arch rivals India and Pakistan.
“One BSF guy was killed and another injured,” senior police superintendent of Baramulla, Imtiyaz Hussain Mir, told AFP, referring to the paramilitary Border Security Force (BSF).
The event that lasted more than two hours had been brought under control and fire had now ceased, the military’s northern command and authorities said.
The strike comes after India last week launched “surgical strikes” on militant posts across the de facto border that divides the Kashmir region between India and Pakistan, prompting a furious response from Islamabad.
Indian and Pakistani troops consistently trade fire across the disputed border known as the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir, but sending ground troops over the line is rare.
Islamabad has dismissed the talk of surgical strikes across the heavily militarised LoC as an “illusion” and said two of its soldiers was killed in small arms fire.
The strikes followed the fatal assault in occupied Kashmir on among India’s army bases, triggering a public outcry and demands for military action.
The raid on September 18 on the Uri army base by militants hurling grenades left dead 19 Indian soldiers in the worst such attack in more than a decade.
Early on Monday morning, soldiers were searching for the militants outside the Baramulla camp, located some 50 kilometres (34 miles) from Srinagar, and it was unknown if any had been killed or caught.
Although this couldn’t be confirmed, the militants were hurling grenades during the assault, based on the Press Trust of India. Residents told local media of loud gunfire coming from your camp.
“Terrorists opened fire on an army camp in Baramulla town,” military spokesman Colonel Rajesh Kalia before told AFP.
Since last month’s strike at Uri, India is on a diplomatic drive.
India and Pakistan have fought three wars since they gained independence from Britain seven decades ago, two of them. Both claim the region in full.
Several armed separatist groups in the Indian-controlled part of the land that was scenic have for decades been fighting to break free.
Before the Uri assault, tensions were high in the occupied Kashmir area that is heavily militarised, with weeks of deadly demonstrations in response to the killing of a young, popular militant leader.
The Kashmiri separatist was killed during a gun battle with security forces in July.
More than 100 civilians are killed, mostly in battles with forces during protests against Indian rule, in the worst violence in the region since 2010.
Islamabad has accused India of perpetrating human rights abuses in the Muslim-majority state.
