India Sends 5,000 Troops to Disputed Kashmir After ‘Targeted Killings’

India said Tuesday it has deployed 5,000 extra troops to Kashmir — an already heavily militarized region — in an effort to quell ongoing violence in the disputed territory, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

“Around 2,500 troops have arrived and they were deployed all over Kashmir valley,” Abhiram Pankaj, a spokesman for India’s paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), told AFP on November 10.

Pankaj said additional soldiers were “on their way” to Kashmir revealing that India planned to deploy an additional 5,000 total troops to the region in the coming days.

The security forces hail from various Indian paramilitary units, including India’s Border Security Force (BSF), an Indian police officer told AFP on condition of anonymity.

At least 42 people have died since a series of violent conflicts between Hindu and Muslim residents of Kashmir sparked last month.

“The spate of targeted attacks began on October 5 when a Hindu pharmacist and a migrant worker from the eastern state of Bihar were shot dead,” Al Jazeera recalled on November 9.

“That was followed by the killing of a Sikh school principal and a Hindu teacher two days later [on October 7],” the Qatari news outlet detailed.

“Rebel groups, who have since 1989 fought for Kashmir’s independence or merger with Pakistan, are believed to be responsible for the attacks,” according to AFP.

“Some of those killed were accused by the Resistance Front, a local rebel group, of being in the employ of [Indian] security forces,” the news agency noted.

Indian security forces have responded to Kashmir’s recent violence by intensifying their operations against local rebel militias. The New Delhi-deployed forces engaged in at least 11 gunfights with Kashmiri rebels in October.

Kashmir is the name for the northernmost region of the Indian subcontinent. The territory borders northern India and northeastern Pakistan in addition to western China and parts of eastern Afghanistan. The region is primarily disputed between the governments of India, Pakistan, and China.

India administers two sections of Kashmir as federal territories: Ladakh and the joint Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan controls territories of Kashmir known as Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, while China occupies Kashmiri regions named Aksai Chin and the Trans-Karakoram Tract.

“An armed rebellion against New Delhi’s rule on the Indian side [of Kashmir] began in 1989, with rebels demanding either the region’s merger with Pakistan or an independent nation,” Al Jazeera recalled on Tuesday.

“The conflict intensified after [Indian] Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government scrapped the region’s limited autonomy in August 2019 and split it into two federally-run territories,” according to the news outlet.