Top Hizb & LeTmilitants, jawan killed in gunfight

eliminated.” On Friday, six militants belonging to Hizb and LeT, including three senior commanders, were killed in a similar gunbattle in Bijbehara area of Anantnag. A suspected Jaish- e- Muhammad militant was killed in a brief encounter with the security forces in Khrew area on the outskirts of Srinagar on Sunday afternoon, the police added.

The security forces have gained an upper hand against the separatist militants after killing over 30 of them in October and about two dozen so far this month, a senior Army official said. He added that among the slain were nine top commanders of the banned outfits.

Giving the details of the gunfight in Shopian, a police spokesman said the encounter began during a cordon- andsearch operation launched by the Army’s 34 Rashtriya Rifles, the J& K police’s counterinsurgency Special Operations Group ( SOG) and the CRPF in the district’s Batgund village overnight. “The operation was launched following credible inputs about the presence of a large number of militants in the village,” he said. The operation ended with the killing of six cadres of the Hizb and the LeT, the spokesman added.

The spokesman identified the slain militants as Mushtaq Ahmed Mir alias Hammad alias Musa, Muhammad Abbas Butt, Umar Majeed Ganai alias Maaz alias Abu Hanzalla alias Abdur Rehman, Muhammad Waseem Wagay alias Saifullah and Khalid Farooq Malik alias Rafi alias Talha. He said their sixth colleague is believed to be a Pakistani.

The soldier who died while fighting militants has been identified as Nazir Ahmad of 162 Territorial Army. Sepoy Sunil Kumar of 34 Rashtriya Rifles was injured in the clash, Army sources said, adding that his condition was “stable”.