SRINAGAR, July 16: Five security personnel were killed in a firefight with gunmen in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, a police officer said Tuesday, with security sources saying militants had made a "tactical shift" in attacks.

Muslim-majority Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947, and each side claims it in full.

Rebel groups have waged an insurgency since 1989, demanding independence for the territory or its merger with Pakistan.

The incident brings the number of soldiers and police killed this year on the Indian side of the disputed Himalayan territory to 17.

A security official, who asked not to be named, said militants had shifted operations from the mainly Muslim Kashmir valley to the Hindu-dominated southern Jammu area, where "counterinsurgency measures are not as strong".

Kashmir's top political official Manoj Sinha said forces would "avenge (the) death of our soldiers". The Indian army's 16 Corps said security forces had launched an operation in the Doda forest on Monday evening, some 135 kilometres (85 miles) southeast of the territory's capital Srinagar, in the Jammu area.

"Contact with terrorists was established...(a) heavy firefight ensued," the army said.

A police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity as he was not authorised to talk to journalists, said that "four soldiers died of injuries they had received during the initial exchange of fire".

A police officer also later died of his wounds, he said, adding two other soldiers had been hospitalised. RSS

 
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