Five security personnel killed in Kashmir fighting

Five security personnel were killed in a firefight with gunmen in Jammu and Kashmir, the army and police said yesterday, with security sources saying militants had made a "tactical shift” in attacks.The clash brings the number of soldiers and police killed this year to 17.A security official, who asked not to be named, said militants had shifted operations from Kashmir valley to southern Jammu area, where "counterinsurgency measures are not as strong”.Kashmir’s top political official Manoj Sinha said forces would "avenge” their deaths.The Indian army’s 16 Corps said security forces had launched an operation in the Doda forest on Monday evening, some 135kms southeast of the territory’s capital Srinagar, in the Jammu area.A "heavy firefight ensued,” the army said, saying four men were killed, including a captain.Indian army chief Upendra Dwivedi sent his "deepest condolences” to the families of the men.A police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a police officer also died of his wounds, adding two other soldiers had been hospitalised.Minister of Defence Rajnath Singh said he was "anguished to learn about the cowardly attack” on the soldiers and police who had made the "supreme sacrifice”.Reinforcements were deployed to track the gunmen in the forested mountains.This year, 61 people have been killed – including 17 civilians, 17 members of the security forces, and 27 militants, according to the New Delhi-based South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), which tracks the violence.That compares to 132 people killed in 2023, including 12 civilians, 33 security officers and 87 militants, according to SATP data.This year, almost all the soldiers killed were in Jammu, while last year almost all were killed in the Kashmir valley.Monday’s clash came a day after the Indian army said it killed three militants as they tried to cross from the Pakistan side of the heavily militarised dividing line, in Kashmir’s Kupwara district.In June, nine people were killed and dozens wounded when a gunman opened fire on a bus in the southern Reasi area.It was one of the deadliest attacks since 2017, when gunmen killed seven people in another ambush on a bus.