Indian government forces killed three suspected rebels in Kashmir overnight following a lengthy gunbattle near the de facto border with Pakistan, police said Tuesday.
The three were killed after heavy firing erupted between security forces and rebels on Monday afternoon at Handwara, a village in a forest 90 kilometres from Srinagar, a local officer said.
Four officers from the police special operations group were injured in the gunbattle that broke out near the heavily militarised border that divides the Himalayan region between India and Pakistan.
“We had specific inputs about the presence of three militants in the area. All three were killed in the encounter,” inspector general of police Abdul Gani Mir said.
The deaths come after suspected militants shot dead a counter-insurgency police officer who was on patrol at a market just outside Srinagar on Monday.
About a dozen rebel groups have been fighting Indian forces since 1989 for Kashmir’s independence or for its merger with Pakistan.
The fighting has left tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians, dead.
Tuesday’s incident follows weeks of sporadic firing across the disputed frontier, which has been among the heaviest since a ceasefire agreement in 2003.
