Suspected rebels kill three civilians in Kashmir

Suspected anti-India gunmen kill civilians in separate street shootings within 90 minutes of each other, police say.

Assailants have separately shot and killed three men in Indian-administered Kashmir, police said, blaming the rebels fighting against the Indian rule in the disputed region for the string of attacks.

In the first incident, police said rebels fired at a prominent chemist, Makhan Lal Bindroo, at his pharmacy in the region’s main city of Srinagar late on Tuesday.

Bindroo, a Kashmiri Hindu, was taken to a hospital where he died, police said, adding that government forces cordoned off the area and launched a hunt for the assailants.

Within an hour, a street food vendor from India’s eastern state of Bihar was shot point-blank in another neighbourhood in Srinagar, killing him on the spot, police said.

In the third incident on Tuesday night, gunmen fatally shot a taxi driver in the city’s northern Hajin area.

Police in a statement called the killings “terror incidents”.

“Investigation is in progress and officers continue to work to establish the full circumstances of these terror crimes,” the statement said.

Government forces cordoned off the sites of the attack amidst a huge search for the assailants. Since August, at least a dozen civilians and police have been killed by suspected rebels.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the latest attacks, which came just four days after suspected rebels killed two residents in street firings in Srinagar.

The Resistance Front, a relatively new rebel group, claimed those attacks, saying the two slain men worked for the Indian security forces, who have been battling a rebellion in the Himalayan territory for the past 30 years.

Rebel groups have been fighting Indian soldiers since 1989, demanding independence for Kashmir or its merger with Pakistan – which controls a part of the divided region and, like India, claims it in full.

India insists the Kashmir rebellion is Pakistan-sponsored “terrorism”. Pakistan denies the charge, and most Kashmiris consider it a legitimate freedom struggle.

Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict.