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SRINAGAR, Oct 21 (Reuters) – At least six migrant workers and a doctor were shot dead in India’s Kashmir region on Sunday night when militants opened fire near a tunnel construction site, officials said, days after a new government was formed in the territory.
An opposition alliance took power in the region this month after winning the first polls in a decade, and the first since its special status was revoked and it was split into two federally administered territories – Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.
The victims of Sunday’s attack were involved in the construction of tunnels meant to provide all-weather connectivity to the militarily strategic Ladakh region, which shares a border with China and Pakistan.
“At least two armed militants barged into the mess of the private construction company and fired at workers who were dining,” said a senior police officer who did not want to be named.
Six workers and a doctor working for the company were killed and five other people were injured in the attack, he said.
The Resistance Front (TRF), which Indian authorities believe is an offshoot of Pakistani Islamist militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement circulating on social media.
Reuters was not able to independently verify the authenticity of the statement.
India’s Interior Minister Amit Shah, in a post on X, said those behind the attack “will not be spared and will face the harshest response from our security forces”.
Kashmir is claimed in full but ruled in part by both India and Pakistan, and militants in the portion under India’s control have for decades fought security forces, resulting in the deaths of thousands of people.
At least nine soldiers were killed in two separate militant attacks in July, barely a month after Prime Minister Narendra Modi took charge for a third term.
Non-Kashmiri workers employed in orchards, paddy fields and construction sites in Kashmir have previously been targeted by militant groups aiming to drive them away.
A bullet-riddled body of a labourer from the eastern state of Bihar had been recovered from Kashmir’s Shopian region last week.
