Lashkar terrorist shot dead; gunbattle rages in Baramulla
A gunfight broke out between a group of two to three separatist militants and the security forces after the latter laid siege to woods outside the Kashmir Valley’s northwestern Sopore town on Monday evening.
IGP (Kashmir) Vijay Kumar said that one of the militants trapped in the woods and believed to be a Pakistani cadre of proscribed Lashkar-eTayyaba (LeT) has been killed and that the operation was still underway as reports last came in.
A police spokesman said that while one foreign militant identified by his code name Hanzalla was killed, two others and their local associate have escaped from the area. “A hunt has been launched for these three terrorists,” the spokesman added.
The local sources said that intermittent firing was going on in Panipora woods of the Zaloora area of Baramulla district.
Earlier, the J&K police’s counter-insurgency SOG had along with the men from the Army’s 22 and 9 Para and the CRPF’s 92 and 179th battalions moved in the area to flush out militants.
A police spokesman said that the militants opened fire at the joint team of the security forces as it approached the spot where the former were hiding and this triggered an encounter.
Earlier during the day on Monday, the police claimed that a suspected militant was arrested and an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) recovered from his house in the Doda district of Jammu region.
Jammu’s additional DGP Mukesh Singh said that the accused Irshad Ahmed was arrested during a search operation carried out jointly by the J&K police, the Army and the CRPF in Doda’s Dhandal-Kastigarh area. He said the search operation, launched on specific information, also led to the recovery of an IED, a mobile phone and other incriminating material from the house of the arrested suspect. The police has registered a case under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and Explosive Substance Act at Doda police station, the ADGP said, adding investigation of the case is going on and more arrests and recoveries are expected at the disclosure by Irshad.
The police had earlier also claimed to have busted a module run by a LeT militant Muhammad Amin alias Khubaib, who is presently operating from Pakistan.