AFP, Srinagar :
India’s security forces suffered a double blow Monday in disputed Kashmir, with five policemen shot dead in a bank raid and two soldiers killed in an attack along the border with Pakistan.
Suspected militants opened fire on a bank van carrying cash around 70 kilometres (43 miles) south of Kashmir’s main city of Srinagar, killing everybody on board, police said.
“All the seven in the van, five policemen and two bank employees, were killed,” director general of police S. P. Vaid told AFP about the raid in Pumbai in Kulgam district.
The gunmen made off with cash and weapons, another police officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.
In a statement to a local news agency, homegrown Kashmiri militant group Hizbul Mujahideen claimed responsibility for the attack and warned more would follow.
Suspected militants in recent months have targeted banks in the southern region of the Kashmir valley, where armed groups have been fighting against Indian rule for decades.
Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since the end of British rule in 1947 but both claim the territory in its entirety.
In a separate incident earlier Monday, the Indian army accused Pakistan of killing two of its soldiers and mutilating their bodies in an “unprovoked” rocket and mortar attack in the tense border region.
The Indian army said in a statement that Pakistani troops attacked a patrol operating between two border posts on the de facto frontier known as the Line of Control in the remote Himalayan region.
India’s security forces suffered a double blow Monday in disputed Kashmir, with five policemen shot dead in a bank raid and two soldiers killed in an attack along the border with Pakistan.
Suspected militants opened fire on a bank van carrying cash around 70 kilometres (43 miles) south of Kashmir’s main city of Srinagar, killing everybody on board, police said.
“All the seven in the van, five policemen and two bank employees, were killed,” director general of police S. P. Vaid told AFP about the raid in Pumbai in Kulgam district.
The gunmen made off with cash and weapons, another police officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.
In a statement to a local news agency, homegrown Kashmiri militant group Hizbul Mujahideen claimed responsibility for the attack and warned more would follow.
Suspected militants in recent months have targeted banks in the southern region of the Kashmir valley, where armed groups have been fighting against Indian rule for decades.
Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since the end of British rule in 1947 but both claim the territory in its entirety.
In a separate incident earlier Monday, the Indian army accused Pakistan of killing two of its soldiers and mutilating their bodies in an “unprovoked” rocket and mortar attack in the tense border region.
The Indian army said in a statement that Pakistani troops attacked a patrol operating between two border posts on the de facto frontier known as the Line of Control in the remote Himalayan region.
