Indian Forces Kill Four Suspected Militants in Kashmir
2015.11.23

Four suspected insurgents and a soldier were killed Monday in various gun battles in India’s restive northern state of Jammu & Kashmir, police and army officials said.
In Indian-administered Kashmir, security forces killed three alleged members of a local militant group, Hizbul Mujahideen, and an alleged member of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a Pakistan-based group fighting for Kashmir to break away from India, in two separate incidents, according to officials.
The three Hizbul men were shot dead during an army operation in the Ashmuqam area of Anantnag, a district in south Kashmir situated 70 km (43 miles) from Srinagar. The army identified those killed as Sartaj Ahmad Lone 28, Adil Ahmad Sheikh 30, and Tanveer Ahmad Bhat 34, all residents of Bijbehara town in Anantnag.
“The slain militants were involved in a number of violence-related incidents, including the killing of a policeman and a civilian earlier this year,” Col. N.N. Joshi, an army spokesman based in Srinagar, told BenarNews.
“The firefight erupted after militants opened firing on a joint search party of army and police in the area,” he said, adding that the search operation was under way.
On Monday morning in the Manigah forest area of Kupwara district, which is 117 km (73 miles) from Srinagar, a suspected LeT was killed as part of an ongoing operation launched in the area 11 days ago by security forces.
“The identity of the LeT militant killed this morning in Manigah is being ascertained. At least two more militants are hiding in the area and intermittent firing is still on,” Kupwara Police Superintendent Aijaz Ahmad Bhat told BenarNews.
“The combing operation has been intensified in Manigah and its adjoining areas to track down militants engaged in intermittent firing with security forces for more than a week. The operation will continue unless militants are eliminated,” he added.
Meanwhile in Jammu, an Indian soldier was killed when his unit came under fire in the Naoshera sector near the Line of Control (LoC), Agence France-Presse reported Monday. The LoC is the heavily militarized border that separates J&K state from the Pakistani-controlled part of Kashmir.
Predominantly Muslim Kashmir, a region in the Himalayas, has been the focus of a territorial dispute between India and Pakistan since 1947. A separatist insurgency has raged in Indian Kashmir since the late 1980s, in which tens of thousands of people have died.
Late Monday, Syed Ali Geelani, a top Kashmir separatist leader, called for people throughout the Kashmir Valley to close their businesses on Tuesday as an act of protest against the killings of the militants, the Kashmir news service reported.
People of Manigah tense
The Manigah area is where an Indian army officer, Col. Santosh Mahadik, who commanded the elite 41 Rashtriya Rifles unit in Kashmir, was killed Nov. 17 in a skirmish with militants. On Sunday, a lieutenant colonel, K.S. Nutt, and two soldiers were shot and injured by suspected insurgents in the forest, officials said.
Residents of Manigah said the ongoing operation had disrupted their lives. The joint army-police operation aimed at flushing out militants from local hideouts intensified over the weekend and into Monday.
“Deafening sounds of mortar shells shook the village on Sunday night, triggering panic. We are afraid to venture out of our homes, fearing to get hit by stray bullets which can come from any direction,” shopkeeper Khursheed Ahmad Malik told Benar News.
Some local farmers said they were unable to tend to their vegetable fields.
“The army is not barring us from moving out of our homes, but [the fear of] stray bullets and mortar shells have forced most of people to stay indoors,” private school teacher Abdul Rashid Malik told Benar News.