Three soldiers were killed and two injured in south Kashmir’s Pulwama on Saturday when militants fired indiscriminately at an Army convoy enroute to Srinagar from Jammu.
An Army spokesman said the convoy came under attack between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m. near the Kadlibal area in Pampore town on the Srinagar-Jammu highway.
The exchange of fire lasted around 10 minutes and the area was sealed by the soldiers immediately.
Search operation
A house-to-house search operation, however, failed to track the militants.
“The militants took the advantage of the presence of the civilian population to escape,” said a police official.
Three militants are believed to have used a bike in the attack. One AK-47 rifle magazine has been recovered from the encounter site, said the police.
Random frisking
Security forces have stepped up random frisking of vehicles on the strategic 300-km Srinagar-Jammu highway, which has become highly vulnerable this year.
On November 29, heavily armed militants stormed an army camp in Nagrota, which left seven soldiers dead, on the same highway.
This year, militants carried out seven major attacks on the Srinagar-Jammu highway, mainly in south Kashmir.
