Indian army soldier kills three colleagues, himself in Jammu-Kashmir

An Indian army soldier killed three of his colleagues and then fatally shot himself Sunday in India's Jammu-Kashmir state, an army officer said.

The army has ordered an inquiry into the killings by Santosh Kumar in an army barracks in Rajouri, a town 160 kilometers (100 miles) northwest of Jammu, the state's winter capital, the officer said on condition of anonymity.

Kumar had recently returned from home leave in India's eastern state of Jharkhand, the officer said. There was no immediate indication of what may have triggered the rampage.

Government soldiers fighting an Islamic insurgency in the Indian-controlled portion of disputed Kashmir often work under stress due to long duty hours in inhospitable, mountainous terrain, AP reports.

Indian forces have been fighting nearly a dozen Islamic rebel groups demanding Muslim-majority Kashmir's independence from predominantly Hindu India or its merger with mostly Muslim Pakistan since 1989.

More than 66,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the conflict. A cease-fire line divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan, which both claim the entire territory and have fought two wars over it since their independence from Britain in 1947.