Attackers fired at Indian police officers and freed a Pakistani militant they were taking to a hospital for a check-up  in the Indian part of Kashmir, police said.

Police spokesman Ghulam Hasan Bhatt said two officers suffered bullet injuries and one of them later died in Srinagar, the main city in India-controlled Kashmir.

The gunmen escaped with the insurgent.

India Kashmir Militant Escape
Indian police stand guard outside an operating theatre (Dar Yasin/AP)

The rebel, a member of the Lashkar-e-Taiba group, was arrested by police in 2015.

Several militant groups have been fighting for Kashmir’s independence from India or its merger with neighbouring Pakistan since 1989.

India Kashmir Militant Escape
A blood-soaked police uniform lies on the floor of the hospital after the attack (Dar Yasin/AP))

Around 70,000 people have been killed in the armed uprising and the ensuing Indian military crackdown.

Anti-India sentiment runs deep among Kashmir’s mostly Muslim population, with most people supporting the rebels’ cause.