SRINAGAR, March 17: Indian troops shot dead 12 Kashmiris in gunbattles on Monday in occupied Kashmir, in the wake of a major attack on a police post, officials said.
Kashmiri fighters, meanwhile, shot dead an alleged security force informer, three policemen, an army soldier and detonated two bombs, injuring two people, they said.
Security forces overnight gunned down six Kashmiris near Baderwah town of southern Doda district, 137 miles south of Srinagar, a defence ministry spokesman said.
“Troops cordoned off the area after a tip-off that there was a militant hideout. The militants opened fire and six of them were killed in the encounter,” the spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Bhamwar Singh Rathore, said in Jammu.
He said the slain Kashmiris were identified as members of Hizbul Mujahedin.
Four more Mujahideen were shot dead by Indian army soldiers near the northern township of Handwara, 53 miles north of Srinagar on Monday evening, an army spokesman said.
An army soldier also died in the encounter, he added.
Hizbul Mujahedin claimed responsibility for destroying a police post on Sunday in the southern district of Udhampur, killing 11 people, in the deadliest attack this year in Kashmir.
The group said the attack was in retaliation for the killing of its district commander in the area.
On Monday police recovered bodies of two of the four policemen abducted by Hizb men from the post they stormed, police said, taking the toll of those killed in the attack to 13.
Two other policemen were set free earlier. Security forces were searching the forest near the demolished police post at Gool to find the culprits.
Chief Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed said the attack on the police post was aimed at derailing his government’s peace initiative.
“The enemy within and across the border have stepped up their planned effort with obvious designs to derail our peace initiative by targeting police personnel and innocent civilians,” Mr Sayeed said in a statement.
He termed the militant storming of a police post “gruesome.”
Mr Sayeed declared that his government would deal with such elements with an iron hand.
“We are equally determined to continue our sincere efforts for the restoration of peace by winning the minds and hearts of the people,” he said.
In a separate incident early on Monday, two Mujahideen were killed in the southern Anantnag district in “retaliatory firing” by security forces, a police spokesman said.
The fighting erupted when Mujahideen hiding in an under-construction structure opened fire at an army patrol injuring two soldiers, he said.
Police said suspected Kashmiris shot dead an alleged security force informer and a policeman in the village of Chakepohru in southern Pulwama district on Monday.
Both the victims were Kashmiri Sikhs.
A policeman and a taxi-driver were injured in a bomb explosion at Bijbehara township on Monday, police said.—AFP
