Soldier killed in Indian Kashmir in ongoing militant attack

Militants attacked an army patrol in Indian Kashmir on Thursday leaving one soldier dead as fighting continued near the border with rival Pakistan, a security official said.

The attack coincides with a regional summit in Nepal attended by the leaders of India and Pakistan, which threatens to end in failure because of rising tensions between the arch-rivals.

The group of heavily armed militants attacked the army column near the town of Arnia in Indian Kashmir, about four kilometres (2.5 miles) from the undisputed, internationally-recognised border with Pakistan.

“A soldier died in the initial attack and another was injured,” said an army officer on condition of anonymity, as he was not authorised to speak to media.

The rebels, suspected to have crossed from Pakistan, entered an “abandoned bunker” which Indian forces then surrounded, triggering the ongoing gun battle.

“They are a group of four to six militants now firing from inside the bunker,” local deputy inspector general of police Shakeel Beig told AFP.

The attack comes with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif unlikely to hold a formal meeting at the summit in Kathmandu, in signs of growing mutual distrust.

Nuclear-armed India and Pakistan have fought two of their three wars since independence from Britain over Kashmir. The picturesque region is held in part by Pakistan and India, but claimed in full by both.

Analysts say India has taken a more assertive stance against its neighbour since Modi’s Hindu nationalist party stormed to power in May.

The attack comes a day before Modi is expected to address a campaign rally in the nearby town of Udhampur for ongoing elections in the Himalayan region.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which swept to government nationally in May, is striving to win power in the Muslim-majority region for the first time.

The region’s chief minister, Omar Abdullah, expressed his condolences over the soldier’s death, while pointing to the timing of the attack.

“The timing of the attack in Arnia can’t be a coincidence. My condolences to the family of the army officer killed in Arnia,” Abdullah said on Twitter.

In October the area was the site of some of the heaviest exchanges of mortar firing between Indian and Pakistani forces in years, when 20 civilians were killed and dozens injured on both sides.

Since 1989 fighting between about a dozen rebels groups, seeking independence or a merger of the territory with Pakistan, and Indian forces has left tens of thousands dead, most of them civilians.