SRINAGAR: Rebels attacked a police squad in the Indian portion of Kashmir, triggering a gunbattle that left three civilians, one officer and an assailant dead, police said Sunday.
The unit came under fire Saturday night as it reached a road accident site on a key highway connecting Kashmir Valley with the rest of India, said senior police officer S.P. Pani.
He said the dead civilians were road construction officials of a private company.
One civilian and one police officer also were injured in the shootout, he said.
Police believe two insurgents escaped under the cover of darkness after the officers swiftly retaliated in Malpora , a village 65 kilometers (40 miles) south of Srinagar, the main city in the Indian-held Kashmir.
On Sunday, thousands of people participated in the burial of the militant who came from a village in the Indian portion of Kashmir. They chanted “Go India, Go Back,” “We Want Freedom” amid a gun salute by militants who joined the procession.
Insurgents have been fighting for Kashmir’s independence from India or merger with neighboring Pakistan since 1989.
Pakistan’s army, meanwhile, accused Indian troops of shooting and wounding at least four Pakistani villagers late Saturday near the UN-monitored Line of Control separating the two sides.
The statement said the Indians also targeted civilians in the village of Thruti with mortars and that Pakistani troops returned fire.
There was no immediate comment from the Indian army.
India accuses Pakistan of arming and training the rebels, a charge Islamabad denies. Pakistan says it only provides moral and diplomatic support to them. India and Pakistan have fought two wars for control of Kashmir, which is divided between them by a cease-fire line.
Gunfight between Indian police, rebels kills 5 in Kashmir
Gunfight between Indian police, rebels kills 5 in Kashmir
Sequestered Suu Kyi overshadows military-run Myanmar election
- Suu Kyi’s reputation abroad has been heavily tarnished over her government’s handling of the Rohingya crisis
YANGON: Ousted Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been siloed in military detention since a 2021 coup, but her absence looms large over junta-run polls the generals are touting as a return to democracy.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate was once the darling of foreign diplomats, with legions of supporters at home and a reputation for redeeming Myanmar from a history of iron-fisted martial rule.
Her followers swept a landslide victory in Myanmar’s last elections in 2020 but the military voided the vote, dissolved her National League for Democracy party and has jailed her in total seclusion.
As she disappeared and a decade-long democratic experiment was halted, activists rose up — first as street protesters and then as guerrilla rebels battling the military in an all-consuming civil war.
Suu Kyi’s reputation abroad has been heavily tarnished over her government’s handling of the Rohingya crisis.
But for her many followers in Myanmar, her name is still a byword for democracy, and her absence on the ballot, an indictment it will be neither free nor fair.
The octogenarian — known in Myanmar as “The Lady” and famed for wearing flowers in her hair — remains under lock and key as her junta jailers hold polls overwriting her 2020 victory. The second of the three-phase election began Sunday, with Suu Kyi’s constituency of Kawhmu outside Yangon being contested by parties cleared to run in the heavily restricted poll.
Suu Kyi has spent around two decades of her life in military detention — but in a striking contradiction, she is the daughter of the founder of Myanmar’s armed forces.
She was born on June 19, 1945, in Japanese-occupied Yangon during the final weeks of WWII.
Her father, Aung San, fought for and against both the British and the Japanese colonizers as he sought to secure independence for his country.
