Indian Army kills 6 Kashmir ‘intruders’

SRINAGAR: The Indian Army says it has foiled infiltration bids by suspected militants from the Pakistani side along a heavily militarized de facto border dividing Kashmir between the two countries and killed six intruders in two days.
Col. Rajesh Kalia, an army spokesman, says the soldiers spotted a group of heavily armed militants in western Uri sector on Friday and an exchange of gunfire left five intruders dead.
Kalia said there was another exchange of gunfire with another group of intruders in northwestern Gurez sector Saturday that killed one militant.
He said there were no casualties on the Indian side. There was no independent confirmation of the Indian claim.
In a separate development, an Indian official said the leader of a key insurgent group in India’s remote northeast had died in a hospital in Myanmar nearly two years after he called off peace talks with the Indian government.
L. L. Doungel, Nagaland state police chief, said S. S. Khaplang, head of a faction of the separatist National Socialist Council of Nagaland, died of renal failure on Friday in Taga region, his outfit’s headquarters. He was 77.
Doungel said his information was based on intelligence reports.
Khaplang called off peace talks with India in 2015 after 14 years of futile negotiations and resumed his fight for an independent Naga homeland.
India blamed his group for killing 18 army soldiers in Manipur state bordering Myanmar in 2015 in the worst attack by the insurgents in two decades.
Shurhozelle Liezietsu, the top elected official of Nagaland state, said on Saturday that officials had visited Myanmar recently and held talks with leaders of the Khaplang faction to encourage them to return to the peace talks.
Separatist groups in the northeast accuse the Indian government of exploiting the region’s rich natural resources while neglecting local development.