- Four militants, three Indian soldiers and three civilians killed in gunfight in Arnia town near LoC
- Indian BSF official says militants had not infiltrated from Pakistan side of LoC
Kashmiri militants wearing army uniforms attacked an Indian army base near the border with Pakistan on Thursday, leaving 10 people dead.
The incident came as Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi had a brief meeting at the 18th SAARC summit in Nepal that clinched a deal to create a regional electricity grid.
Four or five gunmen split into two groups upon arriving in the town of Arnia, about four kilometres from the border, with one group attacking an army bunker and the other holed up in a house, a senior army officer said.
The gunmen did not infiltrate from the Pakistani side of the border, a senior Border Security Force official said.
“They came in a car to Arnia and took shelter in a bunker and targeted the army,” he said.
The incident comes a day ahead of a visit planned by Modi to Jammu, where he will address two election rallies amid phased state polls that conclude on December 20.
Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is striving to win power in the Muslim-majority region for the first time. Earlier, the region’s chief minister, Omar Abdullah, expressed his condolences over the first soldier’s death, while pointing to the timing of the attack.
Three soldiers and three civilians were shot dead, said Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah.
“The timing of the attack can’t be a coincidence. My condolences to the family of the army officer killed in Arnia,” Abdullah said on Twitter.
In October the area was the site of some of the heaviest exchanges of mortar firing between Indian and Pakistani forces in years, when 20 civilians were killed and dozens injured on both sides.
Since 1989 fighting between about a dozen rebel groups, seeking independence or a merger of the territory with Pakistan, and Indian forces has left tens of thousands dead, most of them civilians.