Two suspected rebels and two members of a government-led militia are killed in Indian-controlled Kashmir

NEW DELHI (AP) — Two suspected militants have been killed in a gun battle with government forces Indian-controlled KashmirOfficials said Friday as attackers killed two members of a government-sponsored militia elsewhere in the disputed region.

The region, divided between India and Pakistan but claimed in its entirety by both, has seen a rise in violence in recent months.

The Indian army said a joint team of soldiers and police raided a village near the northwestern city of Sopore late Thursday after a tip-off about the presence of a group of militants.

The militants fired “indiscriminately” at the troops, leading to a gun battle that left two people dead, the army said in a statement.

Troops continued to search the area, the report said. There was no independent confirmation of the incident.

Meanwhile, attackers killed two members of a government-led militia called the “Village Defense Group” in the remote southern Kishtwar area late Thursday, officials said.

Police blamed the killings on rebels fighting Indian rule in Kashmir.

The two, one of them a Hindu and the other a Muslim, were abducted from a forested area where they were grazing cattle on Thursday.

On Friday, hundreds of people took to the streets in several places in Kishtwar and Jammu districts to protest the killings and demand that authorities arrest the perpetrators. Kishtwar also observed a shutdown on the instructions of a Hindu group, the Sanatan Dharam Sabha.

The Village Defense Group was initially formed in the 1990s to protect remote Himalayan villages from anti-India insurgents when government forces could not reach them quickly. As the insurgency subsided in their areas and some militia members gained notoriety for brutality and rights abuses, the militia was largely disbanded.

But last year, after the murder of seven Hindus in two attacks In a remote mountain village near the heavily militarized Line of Control that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan, authorities revived the militia and began rearming and training thousands of villagers, including some teenagers.

The Kashmir Tigers, who Indian officials say are an offshoot of the Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad, claimed responsibility for the killing of the two in a statement on social media. The insurgent group also released photos of the two bloodied bodies.

The statement could not be independently verified.

Prime Minister Omar Abdullah condemned the attack. “I expect that the security forces will take swift action to close any gaps in our counter-terrorism network and ensure that these types of attacks stop completely,” he wrote on social media platform X.

Militants in Indian-controlled Kashmir have been fighting New Delhi’s rule since 1989. Many Muslim Kashmiris support the rebels’ goal of unifying the region either under Pakistani rule or as an independent country.

India insists that the armed forces in Kashmir are Pakistan-sponsored terrorism. Pakistan denies the accusation and many Kashmiris view it as a legitimate freedom struggle. Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict.