Indian troops display arms and ammunition captured from suspected
militants after a gun battle in the Keran sector at the Line of control
(LOC) in Srinagar
New Delhi: India
says it has killed seven fighters and is still fighting others in a
Pakistan-backed force of several dozen who crossed a mountainous and
thickly forested border area with the aim of killing Indian troops,
ratcheting up tensions just as the two countries' leaders agreed to work
together to de-escalate the situation.
Indian troops and the
"infiltrators" were facing off at a distance of around 600 yards,
engaged in "controlled firing," Naresh Vijay Vig, a spokesman for the
Indian army, said Monday. He said five Indian soldiers had been injured.
Indian officials say the exchange of fire began two weeks ago,
when the fighters were spotted in an abandoned village, Shalbhato, and
prevented from advancing farther into Indian territory. Indian troops
killed the seven fighters and seized a large cache of arms, including
six AK-47s, 10 pistols, four grenade launchers and four rocket
launchers, an army spokesman said Friday.
"They have been stopped," an army general, Bikram Singh, told
reporters in New Delhi. "Some of them have been neutralized. An
operation is on to flush them out." India's Defense Ministry described
the episode as a "Border Action Team" maneuver, a reference to a unit of
Pakistan's army.
A Pakistani military spokesman denied any involvement.
"No
such thing happened at all," the official said, in comments to the
Press Trust of India. "This is a blatant lie. We totally deny this
baseless allegation."
The flare-up began just as the prime
ministers of Pakistan and India met in an effort to de-escalate the
tensions, agreeing that senior military commanders should meet to find
ways to uphold the 2003 cease-fire along the so-called line of control.
It is considered a crucial step toward peace between the two
nuclear-armed neighbors.
Though both countries are still
formally observing the cease-fire, violence has risen on the border in
recent months. In September, three heavily armed militants crossed the
Indian border and attacked a police station and an army camp, killing 12
people before Indian troops killed them. That came after the killing of
five Indian soldiers at the border and the gruesome discovery in
January of the bodies of two Indian soldiers, one of whom was found
beheaded. Pakistan also claims that Indian soldiers killed Pakistani
troops.
The village of Shalbhato has been empty since the early
1990s, when it was the scene of fierce fighting and most of its
residents moved to Pakistan, according to Indian news reports. India
then built a border fence along the line of control, which skirts
Shalbhato, leaving the abandoned village on the Pakistani side of the
fence, though it is in Indian territory.
