2 soldiers, civilian killed in fierce J&K encounter

Srinagar: Four militants, two Army jawans and a civilian were killed in a fierce gunfight in a remote village in J&K’s southern Kulgam district on Sunday. An Army major and three of his men were also injured in the clash. They were airlifted to Srinagar and admitted to the 92 Base Hospital at 15 Corps headquarters at the Badami Bagh cantonment. Army sources said the injured major’s condition was “very critical”, while the other soldiers were “stable”.

Soon after the encounter, intense clashes erupted between the security forces and local residents, that left one more person dead and scores others injured in firing. Doctors attending on the injured said several others had been targeted in head, chest or other upper parts of the body “obviously with the intent to kill”.

Both the Army and the J&K police termed the killing of militants a “major breakthrough” against Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Hizb-ul-Mujahedin. Reports said two Lashkar and two Hizb men had been killed.

Police officials in Srinagar said that members of its counter-insurgency Special Operations Group, along with troops from the Army’s 1 Rashtriya Rifles and the CRPF’s 18 Battalion laid siege to Nagabal hamlet of Kulgam’s Frisal area at 4.30 am after a tipoff about the presence of militants.

A report said after laying a cordon around the village, the troops started a house-to-house search but did not find any militant. The SOG men, however, insisted the “source” who alerted them about the presence of the militants in the village could not be wrong, so on their insistence, a particular house was searched again, where the security forces found a false ceiling in which the militants were hiding. The moment they were spotted the militants fired a heavy barrage of gunfire, killing and injuring the soldiers, who were accompanied by the house-owner and his son.

A police statement said three militants managed to escape. “Consequently, the hiding militants opened fire on the joint search party. In the initial firing, two soldiers of 1st Rashtriya Rifles attained martyrdom and a civilian Ishfaq Majeed Reshi was also killed. Further, two more security forces personnel received grievous injuries”, the statement said.

The two soldiers who lost their lives were identified as Lance Naiks Raghubeer Singh and Bhandoriya Gopal Singh. Locals alleged while Reshi (the house-owner’s son) and his father were used as “human shields” by the security forces while searching the area for militants, the other civilian killed in the subsequent clashes fell victim to “target killing”. The authorities strongly refuted the charge. The police statement said one person was killed and some others were injured in “a law and order situation” after the encounter and the incidents were being investigated.

The slain militants are Mudassir Ahmed Tantrey alias Asim, Wakeel Ahmed Thokar, Farooq Ahmed Bhat and Muhammad Younis Lone — all from south Kashmir. The police confirmed two of the slain men, Bhat and Lone, were with the Hizb, and two others, Tantrey and Thokar, were linked to Lashkar. It said two AK rifles, one Insas riffle with ammunition and two pistols were found at the encounter site. “These slain militants were involved in several incidents of militancy, including the killing of policemen,” the statement said. The Hizb’s “operational” spokesman, Burhanuddin, however, claimed while speaking to a local news agency that all four militants belonged to the outfit. He also claimed that before “achieving martyrdom”, they inflicted heavy casualties on the security forces.

J&K’s director-general of police S.P. Vaid termed the killing of the militants a “major success” against the militants, and those of the two Army jawans and the civilian (house-owner’s son) as “unfortunate”.