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Indian troops kill 9 rebels, 4 on de facto Kashmir border
Indian troops killed nine suspected Islamic militants, four of them near the de facto Kashmir border with Pakistan, the army said.
The killings came a day after a second successful bus run between the Indian and Pakistani zones of the disputed region, despite threats by hardline groups to attack it.
"Four of the militants were killed in the Rampur area of ... Uri sector," as they entered Indian Kashmir from the Pakistani-zone, spokesman Lieutenant Colonel V.K. Batra told AFP on Friday.
He said five more militants were killed in a fierce clash near the northern town of Handwara.
Army officials say infiltration from the Pakistan-held zone has dropped 60 percent since India completed a fence along the de facto border or Line of Control dividing Kashmir between the two nuclear-armed rivals.
The trans-Kashmir buses -- a confidence-building measure in the Indian-Pakistan peace dialogue -- have to pass through the Uri sector.
The first bus crossed on April 7 after India and Pakistan agreed to resume the link after nearly six decades.
Indian troops shot dead seven Islamic militants Thursday in three separate clashes in Indian Kashmir after raiding their hideouts, police said.
More than 40,000 people have died in the region since the eruption of an insurgency in 1989. Separatists put the toll twice as high. |
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