The spike in violence comes against a backdrop of rising social
tension and separatist sentiment in the Muslim-majority region, which
for decades has been at the centre of a strategic tussle between India
and Pakistan.
Three Indian police shot dead in Kashmir summer capital(Tribune)
Three Indian policemen were shot dead at point-blank range on Monday in the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir state, in the first such attacks in almost three years, a senior police officer said.
The
attacks followed a weekend shootout in north Kashmir in which five
militants and one Indian soldier were killed, taking to 44 the total
number of separatist fighters killed this year in India's most northerly
region.
The spike in violence comes against a
backdrop of rising social tension and separatist sentiment in the
Muslim-majority region, which for decades has been at the centre of a
strategic tussle between India and Pakistan.
The
three policemen were killed in two separate attacks in Srinagar, police
official Ghulam Hassan Bhat told Reuters, with two killed in the
Zadibal quarter of the city.
"The militants fired at these cops from point-blank range, leaving them in a pool of blood," said Bhat, a deputy inspector general of police in the region.
The
assailants in the second attack shot dead the security guard of a
political leader, also at point-blank range, and took his rifle.
The
attacks came two days after Indian troops killed five militants from
Pakistan-backed militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba in the Kupwara district
bordering Pakistan. One soldier succumbed to wounds suffered in the gun
battle.
The number of militants sneaking across
the de facto border between India and Pakistan has increased this year,
helped by an early summer and a lack of winter snows in the mountainous
region, a senior army officer said.
"As compared to last year the infiltration is on the higher side,"
said Brigadier Rajeev Puri, of the Rashtriya Rifles of the Indian Army,
estimating that around 225 militants were active in the Kashmir Valley.
India
and Pakistan have fought two wars over Kashmir, each controlling part
of the territory but claiming it in full. The Line of Control, or de
facto border, runs along the lines of a ceasefire reached in 1948.
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