Indian troops have reportedly killed 15 Kashmiri youth in the past 24 hours in the occupied Himalayan valley.
According to Kashmir Media Service (KMS), Indian troops gunned down 13 youth during a violent military operation in Mendhar and other villages of Poonch district on Monday.
The operation was launched by Indian troops on May 28 in the areas of the district.
Indian troops also killed two more Kashmiri youth in Pulwama district on Tuesday. The youth were killed by the troops during a cordon and search operation in Saimoh area of the district.
The disputed Muslim-majority valley annexed by India in August last year remains under lockdown for 302 days.
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi annexed the disputed Kashmir region last August, he said it would bring India’s only Muslim-majority state closer to the rest of the country and improve economic conditions.
Yet nine months on, all signs point in the opposite direction. Observers are predicting a bloody summer in the crisis-torn valley, where 12.5 million residents are still locked down.
Today, the trend lines for Jammu & Kashmir are quite troubling, to say the least, wrote Michael Kugelman, a South Asia analyst, in his latest peace “Why isn’t the World talking about Kashmir?”.
The Himalayan valley remains the most heavily militarized region on earth — “a nuclear flashpoint” observers say.
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