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Srinagar: Militants ambushed an army vehicle and killed five Indian soldiers, including two senior officers, in Indian-administered Kashmir, an army spokesman said on Saturday.
The militants sprayed bullets at the vehicle carrying Lieutenant Colonel Ajay Verma, Major Santosh Kumar Singh, a driver and two armed guards on a mountainous road Friday evening, killing all of them on the spot, said an Indian army spokesman.
The officers were returning to their base from road reconnaissance when they were ambushed, the spokesman said, adding the rebels escaped with two assault rifles.
The attack occurred near Simthan, a village 160 kilometres southeast of Srinagar, the main city in India's Jammu and Kashmir state.
The rebels blocked the road with large rocks and as soon as the vehicle stopped they poured heavy fire into it, said a local police officer.
The rebel group, the Save Kashmir Movement, has claimed responsibility for the attack in a phone call to a local news agency.
A spokesman for the group who identified himself as Ghazi Abdul Basit told the Current News Service it was responsible, but gave no further details.
In other attacks yesterday, unidentified rebels lobbed three grenades in different parts of Srinagar, said a spokesman for the Central Reserve Police Force.
One grenade was thrown at a security checkpoint outside the building that houses the office of the chief minister, the state's top elected official, wounding a paramilitary soldier and a female bystander, the spokesman said. The chief minister was not in Srinagar at the time.
There were no reports of injuries in the two other grenade attacks, both aimed at police camps, reported the spokesman.
Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan, but claimed by both. The two countries have fought two wars over the territory since they gained independence from Britain in 1947.
Rebels have been fighting since 1989 to win Kashmir's independence or have the Indian-controlled two-thirds of the Himalayan region merged with Pakistan.
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