At least five Indian soldiers and two militants were killed in a series of gunfights in Indian Kashmir on Monday, where security forces have stepped up operations after several civilian killings last week.
They were moved to a nearby medical facility but succumbed to their injuries, spokesman Lt. Col Davinder Anand said.
Incumbered in part by both India and Pakistan, but only controlled in parts by the neighboring countries, Kashmir has been the site of a bloody insurrection against New Delhi since the 1990s.
Pakistan says Pakistan supports militants in Kashmir. Islamabad denies this, saying that it only provides general support to the Kashmiri people.
The Indian region has been on the edge since Thursday's killing of three Hindus and one Sikh by suspected militants that triggered a crackdown on Indian authorities. Security personnel check the bag of a motorist along a road in Srinagar on October 9. In north Kashmir, security forces shot dead a suspected militant from The Resistance Front TRF which is Pakistan-backed group behind the series of civilian assassinations. The militant was a suspect in the killing of a civilian driver and security forces had been looking for him after arresting four of his associates on Sunday, the Kashmir valley police chief Vijay Kumar said. He was shot dead this morning, Kumar said. In another incident, a separate militant was killed in a gun battle in south Kashmir, said Kumar. There has been an uptick in infiltration attempts by militants from Kashmir, who agreed to observe a ceasefire with India along the border in February, Indian army chief Manoj Mukund Naravane said on Saturday. Over the last month or so, we see repeated attempts at infiltration, Naravane told India Today news channel. We have eliminated two or three such infiltration attempts.