(Adnkronos) – The Indian army announced that it had killed three suspected armed rebels in Kashmir, a region disputed between Pakistan and India and administered by the latter, during a clash in a nature reserve in the Dachigam mountains, about 30 kilometers from the main city of the disputed region, Srinagar. “Three terrorists were neutralized in an intense firefight,” the Indian armed forces wrote in a statement on social media, adding that search operations will continue.
The incident occurred near the main Hindu shrine of Amarnath, to which more than 350,000 people from all over India have traveled as part of an ongoing pilgrimage. The army did not immediately identify the victims, but a police official told AFP that they were all “foreigners”.
The clash comes more than three months after a group of gunmen attacked tourists in Pahalgam, a popular resort town in the disputed territory, killing 26 people, mostly Hindus. Baijayant Panda, a member of parliament for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, told Parliament: “it appears that at least one of those eliminated today was involved in the Pahalgam attack.” The perpetrators of the attack remain at large, although India has accused Pakistan of supporting the attackers, a charge Islamabad has denied, sparking an intense four-day conflict that killed 70 people on both sides.
