A battalion of occupation Indian army soldiers on Monday pulled out of occupied Kashmir's summer capital Srinagar, marking the first withdrawal from the urban hub of insurgency in the Himalayan state, officials said. India has been cutting troops from occupied Kashmir since November 17, in a planned move to nurture a fragile peace process with nuclear-armed rival Pakistan.
A fall in incursions by alleged Mujahideen into Indian occupied Kashmir from the Pakistani-zone and less violence in the hinterland were given as the reasons for the troop cut. The cut comes a day before the arrival of Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz in New Delhi to meet Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to discuss the status of peace talks on occupied Kashmir.
Reports say India may pullout as many as 40,000 of an estimated 200,000 soldiers in the state, which has been hit by an anti-Indian rebellion since 1989. Thousands have died since the unrest broke out.
"On Monday one battalion of Indian occupation army troops have pulled out of the hinterland. They will be deployed outside the state," Indian occupation army spokesman Colonel Sam Sung told reporters in occupied Srinagar.
The troops wearing camouflaged clothes boarded buses, trucks and jeeps, and waved at their colleagues at Srinagar's high-security army airport.
Srinagar, which serves as summer capital between May to October, is regarded as a hotbed of the insurgency and is frequently the scene of car-bomb explosions, clashes and ambushes by alleged Mujahideen against Indian occupation forces. However, the violence has been declining sharply in the state's main city over the past year.
Comments
Comments are closed.