SRINAGAR, Nov 29: Nineteen Indian soldiers, 23 Mujahideen and two children were killed in occupied Kashmir on Wednesday and Thursday, police said.
Seven Indian guards, including two officers, were killed in an overnight gunbattle with Mujahideen in a gunbattle at Achibal village, 50 kilometres north of Srinagar.
Three Mujahideen were also killed during the six-hour encounter.
In another encounter, 11 Indian soldiers and nine Mujahideen died near the highway township of Surankote, 540 kilometres south of Srinagar, after a two-day encounter that ended on Wednesday.
A police spokesman said the Achibal gunbattle erupted when Indian forces entered Achibal after being tipped off about the presence of heavily armed freedom fighters in the area.
An assistant commandant of the paramilitary Border Security Force (BSF) was killed and two BSF personnel were wounded when the Mujahideen opened fire, the spokesman said.
In the ensuing gunbattle, six more BSF personnel, including an inspector, were killed, he said.
A house from which the Mujahideen targeted Indian soldiers was destroyed when troops fired rockets at it. Police said bodies of three Mujahideen were recovered from the debris of the damaged house.
The BSF and the local police started a house-to-house search on Thursday to sweep out other Mujahideen believed to be holding out in the area.
The searches were later called off and no one was arrested.
The Lashkar-i-Taiba said its members were involved in the gunbattle.
“During the encounter more than a dozen security force personnel were killed,” Lashkar spokesman Abu Osama said.
Osama said one of the group’s Kashmiri fighters also died in the clash.
EXPLOSIVE DEVICE: Two Muslim boys aged nine and 11 were killed when an abandoned explosive device detonated after they fiddled with it in Magam village of the Anantnag district on Wednesday night, police said.
On Thursday, Indian forces shot dead four freedom fighters near Kokernag, 70kms south of Srinagar, during an encounter.
An Indian army soldier and a freedom fighter were killed in another gunbattle in Kupwara district on Thursday, police said.
Six Mujahideen died in separate encounters elsewhere in held Kashmir late on Wednesday evening and Thursday, police said.—AFP
