Three suspected Islamist militants and an Indian soldier were killed in a gun battle on Friday in the Indian zone of divided Kashmir, a senior police official said. The guerrillas, thought to belong to the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, were killed by Indian troops in the village of Maidanpora, 120 kilometres (70 miles) north of Kashmir’s main city Srinagar, he said.
Five other Indian soldiers were injured in the fighting, which lasted for eight hours, police superintendent VK Birdi told AFP. Virdi said the firefight broke out after soldiers and policemen encircled a house where some Lashkar-e-Taiba militants were holed up.
“The house, where militants had taken shelter, was razed during the encounter,” Virdi said, adding that an effort was on to retrieve the bodies of the slain militants from the debris. “We were tracking movement of the group for the last two weeks and finally we trapped them,” he said, adding that the house owner and his relatives fled the premises before the fighting erupted. Virk identified two of the slain militants as Pakistani nationals. For more than 20 years, militant groups in Indian-administered Kashmir have fought against New Delhi’s rule in the highly militarised Himalayan region.
