A 12-year-old boy was among six people killed in three separate gun battles between freedom fighters and security forces in Indian-occupied Kashmir, the police and army said Friday. Clashes have raged in the restive mountainous region since the deaths of 40 Indian troops in a suicide bombing last month provoked tit-for-tat air strikes between India and Pakistan.
The boy was killed after freedom fighters were trapped in his home in the northern town of Hajin and engaged in a two-day gun battle ending Friday, police told AFP. His father escaped. Police later claimed the boy was "kept hostage" by the freedom fighters.
"Despite repeated requests by community members and police for his release, he was brutally killed by the terrorists," a police statement said, referring to the two martyred freedom fighters identified as Pakistani nationals. Two more freedom fighters were "eliminated" late Thursday in the frontier district of Baramulla, Kalia added, while one soldier and two policemen were injured. Another freedom fighter martyred in a clash with soldiers in the south of the occupied Kashmir valley, army spokesman Colonel Rajesh Kalia said.