Three Hizbul Mujahideen and Jaish-e-Muhammad militants were killed in a fierce gunfight at Gulshanpora village of south Kashmir’s Tral sub-district on Thursday. Five soldiers were wounded, one of them critically, in the encounter while nearly a dozen protesters who attempted to disrupt the operation were injured in security forces’ action to prevent their advance towards the encounter site.
This is the first encounter of the year 2019 between militants and security forces in the Kashmir Valley. The slain ultras were local cadre of Hizbul Mujahideen who got trapped during a cordon and search operation.
A police spokesman said that the operation was launched on the basis of “credible input about the presence of terrorists in higher reaches of Tral.” “As the searches were going on, the search party was fired upon by the terrorists. The fire was retaliated leading to a gunfight. In the ensuing encounter, three terrorists were neutralised and the bodies were recovered from the site of encounter,” the spokesman said.
During the initial bout of gunfire, three Rashtriya Rifles soldiers were wounded who were immediately evacuated to battalion headquarters at Bajwani and later airlifted to 92 Base Hospital in Srinagar. One critically injured soldier was shifted to Command Hospital in Udhampur for advanced treatment.
Over 250 militants and nearly 90 security personnel were killed during year 2018 in different militancy related incidents. Over 100 civilians were also killed in the previous year.
The slain militants have been identified as Zubair Ahmad Bhat alias Abu Huraira, Shakoor Ahmad Parray alias Jaffar and Tawseef Ahmad Thoker alias Abu Talha, all residents of two different villages of Tral area.
“All the three killed terrorists were wanted by law for their complicity in a series of terror crimes including attacks on security establishments and civilian atrocities. It was a combined group of JeM and HM and as per police records Zubair was affiliated with proscribed terror outfit JeM while Shakoor and Tawseef were affiliated with proscribed terror outfit HM,” police said.
The other injured soldiers have been admitted in Army's 92 Base Hospital in Srinagar.
At least a dozen civilian protesters were injured during tear gas shelling when youths from villages adjacent to the encounter site attempted to disrupt the operation. Even as the authorities snapped internet services in the area, protests were held at several places.