5 soldiers killed in Indian Kashmir
3 hours ago
SRINAGAR, India (AP) — Islamic rebels ambushed an army vehicle and killed five Indian soldiers, including two senior officers, in Indian-controlled Kashmir, an army spokesman said Saturday.
The militants sprayed bullets at the vehicle carrying Lt. Col. Ajay Verma, Maj. Santosh Kumar Singh, a driver and two armed guards on a mountainous road Friday evening, killing all of them on the spot, said Lt. Col. Shantanu Dass Goswami, an Indian army spokesman.
The officers were returning to their base from road reconnaissance when they were ambushed, he said, adding the rebels escaped with two assault rifles.
The attack occurred near Simthan, a village 100 miles southeast of Srinagar, the main city in India's Jammu and Kashmir state.
The rebels blocked the road with large rocks and as soon as the vehicle stopped they poured heavy fire into it, said Mumtaz Ahmed, a local police officer.
The rebel group Save Kashmir Movement claimed responsibility for the attack in a phone call to a local news agency.
A spokesman for the group who identified himself as Ghazi Abdul Basit told the Current News Service it was responsible, but gave no further details.
In other attacks Saturday, unidentified rebels lobbed three grenades in different parts of Srinagar, said Prabhakar Tripathi, a spokesman for the Central Reserve Police Force.
One grenade was thrown at a security checkpoint outside the building that houses the office of the chief minister, the state's top elected official, wounding a paramilitary soldier and a female bystander, he said. The chief minister was not in Srinagar at the time.
There were no reports of injuries in the two other grenade attacks, both aimed at police camps, Tripathi said.
Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan, but claimed by both. The two countries have fought two wars over the territory since they gained independence from Britain in 1947.
Rebels have been fighting since 1989 to win Kashmir's independence or have the Indian-controlled two-thirds of the predominantly Muslim Himalayan region merged with Pakistan.
More than 68,000 people, most of them civilians, have died since the start of the rebellion.
The Associated Press: 5 soldiers killed in Indian Kashmir
5 soldiers killed in Indian Kashmir
