Kashmiri fighters kill five in ambush on army vehicle in IIOJK

Fighters in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) ambushed an army vehicle and killed five people, including three soldiers, officials said on Friday, days after seven construction workers were killed in the disputed territory.

India's army confirmed a brief exchange of fire with fighters late on Thursday in the vicinity of Gulmarg, near the heavily militarised unofficial border dividing IIOJK with Pakistan.

India's Chinar Corps army unit paid tribute to two slain riflemen, expressing "deepest condolences" and "solidarity with the bereaved families" in a post on Friday on social media platform X.

Another soldier wounded in the attack died on Friday at a military hospital. A local government official told AFP two civilian porters engaged by the army were also killed.

The official, declining to be named because he was not authorised to speak to media, said the porters were travelling with soldiers when their vehicle was "ambushed by militants". Their bodies were handed to their families for last rites, an AFP journalist saw.

The region's governor Manoj Sinha joined top army officers to lay floral wreaths on three coffins wrapped in the Indian national flag to pay tribute to the dead soldiers at the military headquarters in the main city of Srinagar.

India has a permanent deployment of about 500,000 soldiers in the part of IIOJK controlled by New Delhi. Freedom fighter groups have waged an insurgency for decades, demanding independence for Kashmir or its merger with Pakistan.