Ten people have died in explosions and shootings that occurred in recent days in Indian-controlled Kashmir, local officials said.
Two children — a 5-year-old boy and a 12-year-old girl — were killed, and five other civilians were injured in a bomb blast in Rajouri district on Monday. A day earlier, four people were killed in the shooting by unidentified armed assailants on civilian homes in Dangri village, according to the local police.
On Wednesday, fighting at a security checkpoint in Jammu city left four attackers dead, officials said.
The attacks have taken place in the mostly Hindu-populated parts of Kashmir.
Manoj Sinha, the New Delhi-appointed lieutenant governor of Jammu and Kashmir, has announced ex-gratia (sympathy) payments of about $12,000 for the next of kin of each civilian killed in the recent attacks.
The violence has prompted protests in Rajouri and other parts of Kashmir as Indian officials pledge swift action against the rebels.
Meanwhile, some people have protested against power outages in different parts of Kashmir.
India stripped Kashmir, the only Muslim-majority state in India, of its constitutional autonomy in 2019 by bringing it under direct federal administration and deploying about 500,000 forces to quell anti-Indian rebels in the region.
Last year, more than 170 suspected rebels and 26 Indian security forces were killed in Kashmir.
New Delhi blames neighboring Pakistan for supporting anti-Indian rebels in Kashmir, a charge that Pakistani officials have rejected.
Last month, Indian authorities confirmed seizing the properties of several Kashmiri Muslim leaders who oppose Indian rule in Kashmir.
Since their emergence as two separate states, Pakistan and India have remained in bitter acrimony over the status of Kashmir. The two nuclear-armed neighbors have fought several times over Kashmir.
Some information in this story was taken from Agence France-Presse.
