Four Indian Troops Killed in Kashmir Rebel Attack

19/05/2002| IslamWeb

Four Indian soldiers were killed and seven wounded when separatist militants using rocket-propelled grenades attacked a security post in disputed Kashmir Sunday, police said.The attack came less than a week after a raid by suspected Pakistan-based militants on an army camp in Kashmir killed 31 people, many of them wives and children of soldiers. The three attackers were also killed.

That attack stoked tensions between India and Pakistan, which have massed a million troops on both sides of their border since a mid-December attack on India's parliament that New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based Muslim militants.

One militant was killed in the latest attack, which took place early Sunday in the Udhampur district of southern Kashmir.

The separatists regularly attack security posts and patrols in Kashmir where more than a dozen rebel groups are fighting Indian rule in the Himalayan region.

Saturday, New Delhi expelled Islamabad's envoy in protest against what it said was Pakistan's failure to crack down on Muslim militants operating in Kashmir.

Officials say more than 33,000 people have died so far in the insurgency that began in late 1989.

PHOTO CAPTION

An Indian trooper checks a briefcase of a Kashmiri Muslim for possible hidden arms and explosives in Srinagar, May 18, 2002. India said it was expelling Pakistan's ambassador in response to an attack on an army camp it blamed on Pakistani-based Kashmiri separatists. (Altaf Hussian/Reuters)