At least four Indian soldiers were killed during a confrontation with militants in Indian-administered Kashmir, marking the most recent incident in a series of attacks by armed insurgents in the disputed region.
The security forces were ambushed on Monday night while conducting a search operation in the forests of Doda district in Jammu.
Last week five Indian soldiers were killed when their vehicle was ambushed in another part of the region, which is disputed by India and Pakistan.
The soldiers were conducting search operations in the area based on intelligence when the shooting began. “Contact with terrorists was established … heavy firefight ensued,” the army said.
Lieutenant-Governor Manoj Sinha, the top political official in the Himalayan region, said forces would “avenge [the] death of our soldiers”.
In a statement, a group calling itself the Kashmir Tigers claimed responsibility for the assault saying it “laid an ambush and opened fire” on Indian forces in an attack that lasted 20 minutes. It claimed the death toll was higher than officially announced.
The incident brings the number of soldiers and police killed this year on the Indian side of the disputed territory to 17.
A security official, who asked not to be named, told AFP news agency fighters have shifted operations from the Muslim-majority Kashmir valley to the Hindu-dominated southern Jammu area, where “counterinsurgency measures are not as strong”.
