Police: Two Soldiers, Militant Killed in Indian Kashmir Attack
Suspected rebels killed two paramilitary soldiers and wounded another ten after attacking their convoy in disputed Indian Kashmir on Wednesday, a senior police officer said.
The militants fired on the convoy transporting Border Security Force (BSF) troops near the town of Udhampur, 250 kilometers (155 miles) south of the main city of Srinagar.
"We had two fatal casualties of BSF soldiers, ten were injured in the attack," inspector general of police for the region, Danesh Rana, told Agence France Presse.
One militant was killed during a gunbattle with government forces that followed the attack. Another was captured and four civilians taken hostage by him were rescued unharmed, Rana said.
The attack comes a week after militants stormed a police station in neighboring Punjab province, sparking an 11-hour gunbattle with officers that killed seven people.
India accused the militants of crossing the border from neighboring Pakistan to launch the attack, the first in Punjab in more than a decade.
On Tuesday four civilians were killed during heavy exchanges of fire by Indian and Pakistani troops across their border in southern Kashmir.
Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since the two countries won independence from Britain in 1947, but both claim the territory in its entirety.
Since 1989, several rebel groups have been fighting hundreds of thousands of Indian forces deployed in the region, for independence or a merger of the disputed territory with Pakistan.
Tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the unrest.
Source: Agence France Presse
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