New Delhi: Suspected militants fired on a military camp in Indian Kashmir late Sunday killing one trooper, police said, two weeks after a similar deadly attack that spiked tensions between arch rivals India and Pakistan.
One paramilitary officer was also injured during the firing by an unknown number of militants in Baramulla town, northwest of the Himalayan region’s main city of Srinagar.
“One BSF man has been killed and another injured,” senior police superintendent of Baramulla, Imtiyaz Hussain Mir, told AFP, referring to the Border Security Force (BSF).
Mir said the rebels were not successful in breaching the perimeter of the camp, located inside the town, some 50 kilometres from Srinagar.
The army said on Twitter the “incident” had been brought under control and firing had stopped, without saying whether any suspected militants had been killed or captured.
“Terrorists opened fire on an army camp in Baramulla town,” Colonel Rajesh Kalia earlier told AFP.
Local media quoted residents as saying that loud gunfire could be heard coming from the camp.
The attack comes after India last week launched “surgical strikes” on militant posts across the de-facto border that divides the Kashmir region with Pakistan, prompting a furious response from Islamabad.
Indian and Pakistani troops regularly exchange fire across the disputed border known as the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir, but sending ground troops over the line is rare.
The move followed the deadly attack on one of India’s army bases in Kashmir that New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based militants, triggering a public outcry and demands for military action.
The September 18 raid on the Uri army base by militants hurling grenades left 19 Indian soldiers dead in the worst such attack in more than a decade.
A number of armed separatist groups in the Indian-controlled part of the picturesque territory have for decades been fighting to break free from New Delhi.
Islamabad has dismissed last week’s talk of surgical strikes across the heavily militarised LoC as an “illusion” and said two of its soldiers had been killed in small arms fire.
