SRINAGAR, India — Two Indian soldiers were killed on Saturday in an ongoing gunfight after suspected militants attacked a military base in the Jammu region of Indian-administered Kashmir, officials said.
The pre-dawn attack left six others injured, including a girl, after heavily armed militants stormed Sunjuwan Army camp near Jammu, the second largest city in the disputed Himalayan region close to the border with Pakistan.
“Two Junior Commissioned Officers (JCOs) have been killed and six others injured in Jammu militant attack,” a senior minister Abdul Rehman Veeri told lawmakers inside the state’s parliament.
Jammu’s regional police chief S.D. Singh said the attack kicked off around 4:55 a.m. (2325 GMT Friday) when guards came under a hail of bullets near the base’s boundary wall.
“The attackers later entered the camp and they have been cornered in one of the family quarters,” Singh said.
Police chief S.P. Vaid said that one of the injured was the daughter of an army officer.
There was no immediate confirmation on the number of attackers or the group they belong to.
The attack came a day after the death anniversary of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, who was hanged in Delhi’s Tihar Jail. This is also the second attack on the Sunjwan camp in 15 years. In 2003, terrorists had barged into its premises and killed nearly a dozen soldiers. The death anniversary of JKLF leader Maqbool Bhat, who too was also hanged in Tihar jail, falls on Sunday and separatist Hurriyat Conference has called for a shutdown on that day as well.
Meanwhile, a senior lawmaker of the National Conference on Saturday raised pro-Pakistan slogans in the Jammu and Kashmir provincial assembly after some lawmakers for the Hindu nationalist part (BJP) condemned the neighboring country over the terror attack on an army camp in Jammu.
Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since their independence from Britain in 1947. Both claim the territory in full and have fought two wars over the mountainous region.
Hundreds of thousands of people, mostly civilians, have died in an armed insurgency that erupted in 1989.
Rebel groups have for years fought the roughly half a million Indian soldiers deployed in the region, demanding independence or a merger with Pakistan. — Agencies
