Indian soldiers in Kashmir killed two suspected militants on Wednesday, the army said, the latest clashes during campaigning for local elections in the disputed region.
Muslim-majority Kashmir has been divided between rivals India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947, and both claim the Himalayan territory in full.
India-controlled Kashmir is gearing up for the first local assembly elections in a decade, with voting in the three-phased poll beginning on September 18.
The Indian army said “two terrorists were neutralised”, a term they use indicating the men had been killed.
The clashes took place Kathua, in the territory’s southern district of Jammu, which is majority Hindu.
Rebels have fought Indian forces for decades, demanding independence or a merger with Pakistan.
About 500,000 Indian troops are deployed in the region, battling a 35-year insurgency that has killed tens of thousands of civilians, soldiers and rebels since 1989.
On Monday, the army said it had killed two gunmen on the Indian side of the heavily militarised de facto border with Pakistan.
The territory has been without an elected local government since 2019, when its partial autonomy was cancelled by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and it was brought under New Delhi’s direct rule.
A total of 8.7 million people will be eligible to vote for the region’s assembly, with voting to begin next week and results expected on October 8.
Ahead of the vote, Modi is expected to address rallies for his Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the southern Jammu areas of the territory, which has a sizeable Hindu population.
In the past two years, more than 50 soldiers were killed in clashes, mostly in the Jammu area.
India and Pakistan accuse each other of stoking militancy and espionage to undermine each other and the nuclear-armed rivals have fought several conflicts for control of the region.
