3 Hizb men killed in Shopian gunfight

‘113 militants killed in J&K so far this year’

Three Hizb-ul-Mujahideen militants including a senior commander were on Tuesday gunned down by the security forces during a cordon-and-search operation in Jammu and Kashmir’s southern Shopian district.

This was the fourth such clash in the district in the past two weeks. In earlier incidents, 17 militants were killed. The police claimed that the militant trio killed on Tuesday may have been involved in the recent murders of Congress sarpanch Ajay Pandita Bharti and another civilian Tariq Ahmed Paul.

The J&K police and Army officials said that the latest encounter took place in Shopian’s Turkawangam village shortly before dawn on Tuesday. They said that the operation to flush out militants dead or alive from the village was launched jointly by the J&K’s police’s counterinsurgency Special Operations Group (SOG), the Army’s 44 Rashtriya Rifles and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF)’s 178th Battalion on “specific inputs about the presence of terrorists in the area.”

The slain militants were identified as Hizb’s district commander Zubair Wani and his close associates Kamran Manhas and Muneeb-ul-Haq, all local Kashmiris. Manhas is a nephew of former PDP legislator Zaffar Iqbal Manhas who recently joined Jammu Kashmir Apni Party launched by former minister Syed Altaf Bukhari in March this year. The police said that two AK-47 and one INSAS rifles with live ammunition were found on the slain militants.

Inspector General of Police (Kashmir range) Vijay Kumar said that no collateral damage took place during the operation “due to an excellent and swift action carried out in a professional manner” by the security forces.

As per the official statistics, as many as 113 militants were killed in J&K so far this year, most of them in gunfights with security forces in south Kashmir region comprising Anantnag, Kulgam and Pulwama district besides Shopian.