Indian forces have detained close to 1,000 people in a sweeping crackdown in Indian-administered Kashmir, local officials have said, following a string of suspected militant attacks and targeted killings in the disputed region.
Assailants fatally shot three Hindus and a Sikh person in the region’s main city of Srinagar this week in a sudden rise in violence against civilians that both pro- and anti-India Kashmiri politicians widely condemned.
Local police blamed the spate of killings on militants fighting against Indian rule in the region for decades. Officials said they had detained in the last three days close to 1,000 people across the Kashmir Valley for questioning, with the majority of detainees from the main city of Srinagar. Police say militants belonging to The Resistance Front, or TRF, rebel group have shot and killed seven people since last week, pushing up the death toll from such attacks this year to 28 people. While 21 of those slain were Muslims, seven of them belonged to Hindu and Sikh minority communities.
Speaking with reporters recently, the region’s top police officer Dilbag Singh described the killings as a “conspiracy to create terror and communal rift.”
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