Clash brings number of soldiers and police killed this year to 17.
SRINAGAR: Five security personnel were killed in a firefight with gunmen in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu & Kashmir (IIOJ&K). Security sources reported a “tactical shift” in attacks by those opposing the Indian government.
This clash increases the number of soldiers and police killed this year to 17. A security official, who wished to remain anonymous, noted that the fighters had shifted their operations from the predominantly Muslim Kashmir valley to the Hindu-dominated southern Jammu area, where “counterinsurgency measures are not as strong.”
The Indian army’s 16 Corps stated that security forces had launched an operation in the Doda forest on Monday evening, around 135 kilometers southeast of Srinagar, the territory’s capital. A “heavy firefight ensued,” resulting in the deaths of four men, including a captain.
A police officer, also speaking anonymously, told AFP that another police officer died from his wounds, and two additional soldiers were hospitalized.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh expressed his sorrow over the “cowardly attack” on the soldiers and police, who he said had made the “supreme sacrifice.”
Reinforcements have been deployed to track the gunmen in the forested mountains.
So far 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 monitors violence. This compares to 132 deaths in 2023, including 12 civilians, 33 security officers, and 87 militants, per SATP data.
Notably, most of the soldiers killed this year were in Jammu, while last year, most casualties were in the Kashmir valley.
The firefight on Monday followed the Indian army’s announcement a day earlier that it had killed three suspected fighters attempting to cross the heavily militarized dividing line in Kupwara district
