Indian army kills suspected fighter in occupied Kashmir after convoy ambush

Indian troops killed a suspected freedom fighter in Indian-Occupied Kashmir (IoK) on Monday hours after gunmen sprayed a military convoy with bullets, the army said, in the latest attack in the disputed Himalayan territory.

Gunmen fired on the Indian army convoy including an ambulance in the early hours of Monday in the mountainous southern Akhnoor area, near the unofficial border with Pakistan. No one was injured.

Soldiers launched a hunt for the attackers, later reporting that one person had been killed.

“Body of one terrorist, along with weapon has been recovered,” the Indian army’s XVI Corps said in a statement.

At least 500,000 Indian troops are deployed in Indian-occupied Kashmir, battling an insurgency that has killed tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and freedom fighters since 1989.

Earlier this month gunmen killed seven people near a construction site of a strategic road tunnel to Ladakh, the high-altitude region bordering China.

On Friday, Indian officials said five people — including three soldiers — were killed in an ambush on an army convoy.

New Delhi regularly blames Pakistan for arming the militants and helping them launch attacks, an allegation Islamabad denies.

The army says more than 720 rebels have been killed since Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government cancelled the territory’s limited autonomy in 2019.

In early October, IoK held its first elections since 2014 for a regional assembly for the territory of some 12 million people.