The violence in Indian Kashmir has fallen to its lowest level since militants launched a revolt some 20 years ago, officials said yesterday, but warned against complacency.
Killings have dropped to one a day, from 10 daily in 2001 and a peak of 13 in 1996, when the insurgency against Indian rule was at its high with daily bomb attacks and gunbattles, official police records in Kashmir showed.
“The militant violence has fallen to an all-time low,” a police officer said, requesting not to be named because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
PHOTO: REUTERS
He said during the first seven months of this year, an estimated 195 people — 113 militants, 45 civilians and 37 security personnel — were killed in the region.
“For the first time since 1989, the daily death toll has dropped to one,” the officer said, referring to the year when the separatist revolt began in the Muslim-majority Himalayan region.
The levels of violence dipped after India and Pakistan, whose territorial dispute over Kashmir has triggered two wars, embarked on a peace process in 2004.
Indian officials also attribute the drop to India’s fencing of the border between the two countries and what they say are more effective counter-insurgency tactics.
The insurgency has left more than 47,000 people dead, official figures show. Human rights groups put the toll at 70,000 dead and disappeared.
Despite the easing of violence, Indian Kashmir’s senior minister Ali Mohammed Sagar opposed any reduction in troop levels in the state, a key demand of main opposition Peoples Democratic Party.
He warned that it was not wise to “lower our guard as some incidents [of violence] were still taking place.”
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