Indian government forces killed five suspected fighters, including a teenager, in gunfights in Indian-occupied Kashmir (IoK), police said on Sunday.
The back-to-back clashes began late on Saturday after troops cordoned off two villages in southern IoK’s Shopian and Bijbehara areas on intelligence that pro-independence Kashmiri fighters were hiding there, police said.
Three fighters were killed and two soldiers wounded in Shopian, Inspector General Vijay Kumar told reporters, and said troops had recovered a rifle and a pistol from the site.
One of the slain fighters was a teenage boy who, according to officials, had joined the ranks of pro-independence fighters a few days earlier. Kumar said several attempts were made to seek the trapped fighters’ surrender but they had refused.
