Rebels killed three Indian soldiers after ambushing a convoy in Indian Occupied Kashmir, officials said on Saturday.
An unknown number of people on motorbikes opened fire on the army convoy near Pampore town on the key highway a few miles south of Srinagar, the region’s main city, they said.
Thousands of vehicles including army convoys pass daily through the crucial 300-kilometre Jammu-Srinagar highway – the only road link to the Himalayan valley.
“Motorcycle-borne militants ambushed an army convoy. There have been casualties but details are being ascertained,” K Rajendra Kumar, police chief of Indian Occupied Kashmir said. An Indian army official on condition of anonymity said three soldiers were killed in the attack.
The gunmen fled the scene and a major search operation to track down the attackers had been launched, the source said.
Indian troops have launched a search operation to hunt the gunmen behind Saturday’s attack, an Indian defence spokesman said.
“A bad year in terms of security force casualties just got worse,” Omar Abdullah, the leader of the main opposition group in Indian Occupied Kashmir, said in a Twitter post following the latest attack.
Last month, rebels killed seven soldiers after they attacked a military base along the highway.
There has been an uptick in deadly gunfights between armed rebels and security forces after months of mass protests against Indian rule, which left more than 90 civilians dead and thousands more injured. The protests started after popular rebel commander Burhan Wani was shot dead in a gunfight in July, triggering the fatal clashes between protesters and government forces. Although the protests have largely subsided a crackdown on suspected protesters is continuing.
