22 February 2016•Update: 25 February 2016
By Zahid Rafiq
SRINAGAR, Jammu Kashmir
A 50-hour gun-battle between pro-independence militants and Indian forces in the Indian-held Jammu Kashmir region finally ended Monday afternoon with the death of all three militants involved.
Five Indian soldiers, including two army officers belonging to an elite commando division, along with one civilian, were also killed in the firefight.
"The encounter is over and all three terrorists have been killed. Forces are now sanitizing the area and carrying out a final search-and-cordon operation in the vicinity," a police spokesperson told Anadolu Agency.
According to eyewitnesses, Indian forces on Monday -- the third day of the gunfight -- resorted to the use of heavy weapons, including RPGs and mortar shells, to kill the militants, who were holed up on the third and fourth floors of a five-story office complex on Srinagar’s outskirts.
"A joint team [comprised] of the Indian army, the police special operations group and paramilitary personnel have finally finished it off, but there were a high number of casualties on our side," a senior police official told Anadolu Agency.
He went on to describe the battle as one of the longest and fiercest in recent times.
"Usually, militants hole up inside smaller and weaker residential houses and buildings, which quickly burn and come down under heavy fire," he said. "But this was a huge building that gave them a big area to operate in."
While the militants’ identities have not yet been determined, India had earlier accused arch-rival Pakistan of having trained and armed them.
The gun-battle first erupted Saturday afternoon after the militants attacked a police bus, killing two police personnel and injuring ten others.
After the attack, the militants took shelter inside a government office building, from which some 60 employees were evacuated before the gunfight began.
When the battle finally ended Monday, local residents converged on the area in the hundreds -- many of them shouting pro-independence and anti-India slogans -- to demand the slain militants’ bodies.
Kashmir, a Muslim-majority Himalayan region, is held by India and Pakistan in parts and claimed by both in full. A small sliver of Kashmir is also held by China.
Srinagar is the summer capital of the Indian-held portion of Kashmir (Jammu Kashmir).
Pakistan and India have fought three wars -- in 1948, 1965 and 1971 -- since the partition of the latter in 1947. Two of the conflicts were fought over Kashmir.
Since 1989, Kashmiri resistance groups in Indian-held Jammu Kashmir have fought Indian rule to demand independence or unification with neighboring Pakistan.
Tens of thousands of Kashmiris have reportedly been killed in the violence, most of them by Indian forces.
India currently maintains an estimated half-million troops in Jammu Kashmir.
