Senior army officer killed in Kashmir gunfight

A senior ranked officer of the Indian army was killed and another injured in a brief gunfight with rebels along the Line of Control in disputed Kashmir, army sources said Saturday. The army's Junior Commanding Officer (JCO) identified as Arun Kumar was killed while another soldier Solanki Raju was injured early Saturday morning when a group of rebels attempting to sneak into the Indian portion of Kashmir was intercepted by the army triggering a gunfight in North Kashmir's Machil sector, some 110 miles from the summer capital Srinagar. The rebels fled back from the cease-fire line, dividing Kashmir between Pakistan and India, to the Pakistani side of Kashmir leaving behind some arms and ammunition near the Dingri post manned by army's 56 Rashtriya Rifles. About a dozen Muslim rebel groups are fighting for Kashmir's independence from India or its merger with bordering Pakistan since 1989. More than 70,000 people have been killed in the region, according to one estimate. India maintains over half-a-million troops in the Himalayan region to contain rebels it says Pakistan supports, a charge Islamabad denies. Earlier in March this year, two rebels in a suicide attack owing allegiance to Hizbul Mujahideen, the largest armed separatist group in Kashmir, shot dead five Indian paramilitary soldiers in Srinagar, who authorities had claimed to have entered Kashmir from the LoC.