PESHAWAR/ MUZAFFARABAD: Four Pakistani soldiers lost their lives in separate incidents while performing their duties in different parts of the country, the military’s media wing, ISPR, said on Thursday.
Security forces raided two militant hideouts in a former insurgent stronghold in Pakistan's northwest, triggering shootouts that left three soldiers and two insurgents dead.
The separate raids took place in the North Waziristan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and one of the slain militants was a bomb-making expert, the military said in a statement. It provided no further details and the identity and nationality of the slain militants were not known.
North Waziristan served as a headquarters of the Pakistani Taliban until the military secured it in 2015 with a series of operations. However, isolated militant attacks on troops have continued, raising fears the Taliban are regrouping in the northwestern regions bordering Afghanistan.
Pakistan also lost another soldier in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir after Indian troops opened fire across the Line of Control (LoC) on Thursday, the military said.
An official statement issued by the army condemned what was described as India's unprovoked violation of the 2003 cease-fire agreement along the LoC, which separates Kashmir between the two sides. The Pakistani troops returned fire, it added.
There was no immediate comment from New Delhi but the two sides routinely accuse each other of unprovoked attacks in Kashmir, which is a split between them and claimed by both in its entirety.
Pakistan and India have fought two of their three wars over Kashmir since gaining independence from British rule in 1947.
