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Indian Police Say Separatist Group in Kashmir "Neutralized"
SRINAGAR, India, Nov 21 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Security forces in Indian-administered Kashmir have wiped out a formidable Muslim separatist group, Kashmir's police chief said Wednesday.
"The security forces have neutralized a pro-Pakistan Al Badar militant group in Kashmir during the past 72 hours," police chief Ashok Kumar Suri told reporters in Srinagar.
"My boys have shot dead six top commanders over the past three days, including the group's operational chief and divisional commander."
"Militant" is the word used by the Indian army to describe the various armed groups and individuals fighting Indian occupation in Kashmir.
Counter-insurgency
police on the outskirts of Srinagar, the summer capital, killed the group’s
operational chief and divisional commander during an encounter Tuesday night.
Suri said 13 other Al Badar activists had been arrested and arms and ammunition recovered.
"The group has been wiped out in Kashmir," he said, before admitting the group had been "neutralized" last year, but had " re-grouped within months."
Indian officials said Al Badar was dominated by foreigners and had been active in Kashmir for the past six years.
Suri said other Pakistan-based groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Hizbul Mujahiden were still "very active" in Kashmir.
"Pakistan is pumping men and munitions into Kashmir to keep the pot boiling," Suri said.
He added, however, that the situation was well under the control of the security forces.
"We have killed 1,750 militants so far this year, which is the largest number killed in one year since the eruption of militancy in 1989," he said.
The security forces added 12 lives to that count on Wednesday, as the paramilitary Border Security Force (BSF) shot 12 activists in the Ramgarh area, 31 miles south of Jammu, as they were trying to cross the border from Pakistan to India, according to a defense spokesman.
India accuses Pakistan of arming, training and funding "cross-border terrorists" battling New Delhi's rule in Indian Kashmir, a charge that Pakistan denies, saying it provides only moral and diplomatic support to the Kashmiri struggle for self-determination.
Indian security personnel say Pakistani troops often resort to border firing to distract Indian attention, allowing "militants" to cross the border into Kashmir unnoticed.
The defense spokesman said Indian and Pakistani forces were also exchanging fire along the international border overnight.
A woman died and at least 12 other civilians were injured in the Indian shelling on the Pakistani side of the disputed Kashmir border, police said Wednesday.
Police official Raja Ghulam Sarwar said Indian shelling began early Tuesday and continued intermittently until late in the night.
A 45-year-old woman was killed in a remote village northeast of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-controlled-Kashmir, Sarwar said, adding that eight other people were injured in the same area.
In Leepa valley, southeast of Muzaffarabad, four people, including two women, were wounded in a separate round of shelling.
Daily violence in and around Kashmir is the legacy of a 12-year-old Muslim uprising against Indian rule and a brutal Indian crackdown, which has cost more than 35,000 lives since it began in 1989. Kashmir's neighbors, Pakistan and India, have fought two of their three wars over its fate.
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