Five militants were killed on Sunday in a security operation in Kulgam in south Kashmir. In a separate incident, 10 persons, including a woman, were injured in a grenade blast in Srinagar.
A group of militants from both Hizbul Mujahideen and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) was encircled by personnel of Army’s 9 Rashtriya Rifles (RR), police and CRPF following an on-ground intelligence input about their presence at Devsar’s Kellan village in Kulgam, an official said. The operation was launched in sub-zero temperatures in the morning.
On spotting the militants, the security forces engaged them in a fierce gunfight, in which three militants were killed, said the police. Two militants, in the mean time, holed up themselves in nearby residential houses, and fired as soon as the security forces pressed into service a debris-removing machine at the encounter site.
“All five militants were killed and bodies recovered. Arms and ammunition were recovered. There has been no collateral damage and the encounter site has been cleared,” said Inspector General of Police (IGP), Kashmir, S.P. Pani.
Meanwhile, the police identified the slain militants as Waseem Ahmad Rather, Aqib Nazir Mir, Parvaiz Ahmad Bhat, Idrees Ahmad Bhat and Zahid Ahmad Parray.
“It was a combined group of Hizbul Mujahideen [HM] and Lashkar-e-Taiba [LeT]. Waseem, Aqib and Parvaiz were involved in the killings of a civilian and a local Army personnel,” said the police.
This group was also involved in a series of grenade attacks in Anantnag and Kulgam districts, it added.
In Srinagar, militants triggered a grenade explosion near busy Palladium Cinema in Lal Chowk.
“Ten people, including four policemen, three CRPF men and three civilians sustained injuries in the blast. All of them are stable. A woman was among the injured civilians," said the police.
