Militants shot dead a retired soldier and left his wife and her 14-year-old niece injured outside his home in Behibagh village of Kulgam in south Kashmir on Monday.

Local people, who identified the victim as Manzoor Ahmad Wagay, a 45-year-old former Territorial Army soldier, said the village was just a few hundred metres from a sprawling army camp.

The injured Aina Akhtar and her niece Saniya have been admitted to hospital. A neighbour said Wagay was a father of five daughters and a son, aged 9 to 15.

Police and army personnel, including officers, rushed to the village immediately after the attack but the militants had escaped by then. The number of the attackers remains unclear.

Saniya’s brother Rameez Ahmad said his uncle and aunt had visited their home shortly before the attack.

“They came to our home. When they left, my sister Saniya accompanied them,” Ahmad told The Telegraph over the phone.

“Sometime later, while I was having lunch, we received a call that said something awkward had happened. I immediately rushed to the army hospital at the camp but they had been shifted to other hospitals.”

Ahmad added: “My uncle was said to be alive at the army hospital. But his condition was serious. An ambulance shifted him to another hospital for specialised treatment.

“In the meantime, I got a call from my sister, calling from her aunt’s number, saying she had a hand injury. We are told they have been shifted to the Badami Bagh Hospital (in Srinagar).”

Ahmad said his aunt had a leg injury but he did not know whether it was a bullet injury.

The neighbour who spoke to this newspaper said Wagay had just parked his car outside his home when he was fired at.

“He routinely parked his car around 50 feet from his home in an open space. This is because there’s a footpath leading to his home, on which a car cannot pass. Somebody was waiting for him outside and fired at them,” he said.

The neighbour said Wagay had been a volunteer with the counter-insurgent militia Ikhwan before he joined a Territorial Army unit. He retired in 2021.

Wagay’s brother told reporters that he found the former soldier covered in blood.

“He had been hit in the stomach. We took him to the nearby army hospital, from where he was shifted to the district hospital in Anantnag. We received a call from the hospital saying he was no more,” he said, weeping.

“He was like a father to me. He had largely confined himself to his home since his retirement. We never knew his enemies would not spare him.”

A large number of villagers gathered at Wagay’s hometo express condolences.

Videos showed women relatives wailing.

Chief minister Omar Abdullah said he was deeply saddened by “the tragic killing of an ex-serviceman”.

“My heartfelt condolences to his family, and prayers for the swift recovery of his injured wife and daughter (sic),” he wrote on X.