Officials reported that militants in India’s Kashmir region shot and killed at least six migrant workers and a doctor on Sunday night when they opened fire near a tunnel construction site, days after the establishment of a new government in the area.
After winning its first elections in ten years and the first since the region’s special status was revoked and it was divided into two federally administered territories, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, an opposition alliance came to power this month.
The victims of Sunday’s attack were working on tunnels that would give the strategically important Ladakh region—which borders China and Pakistan—all-weather connectivity.
According to a senior police officer who wished to remain anonymous, “at least two armed militants barged into the mess of the private construction company and fired at workers who were dining at the time of the attack.”
According to him, the attack claimed the lives of six employees and a doctor and injured five more.
In the past, militant groups have also targeted non-Kashmiri migrants working in Kashmir’s orchards, paddy fields, and construction sites with the intention of displacing them.
“Despicable act of cowardice” is how Indian Interior Minister Amit Shah described the attack.
He wrote to X, “Our security forces will not spare those involved in this heinous act and will face the harshest response.”
Both India and Pakistan claim the entirety of Kashmir, but they also partially govern it. For decades, militants in the area that India controls have fought security forces, killing thousands of people.
A worker from the eastern state of Bihar was found shot and killed in the Shopian region of Kashmir last week in yet another violent incident.
Just one month after Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumed office for a third consecutive term, suspected militants killed at least nine soldiers in two separate attacks in July.
