Two soldiers were injured in a gunfight in north Kashmir’s Bandipora district on Thursday even as terrorists are suspected to have escaped from the site of encounter.
The gunfight erupted when joint teams of counterinsurgency police and Army’s 13 Rashtriya cordoned off Shahgund village in Hajinm pocket of Bandipora. The security forces had input that a group of foreign terrorists was hiding in the area.
“As the cordoned was being laid, the militants opened indiscriminate firing injuring two Army jawans,” a police officer said. The wounded soldiers were immediately evacuated to Army’s 92 Base hospital in Srinagar for treatment where one soldier was reported to be in critical condition.
Police said the security forces opened fire in retaliation. “There was a brief encounter but no fatal casualty occurred,” the officer said. The militants escaped from the encounter site. The security forces cordoned off the area for searches. However, the terrorists were not tracked down.
Sources said that a similar encounter had occurred in the area but terrorists managed to escape in the same fashion. The terrorists are believed to be the cadre of banned lashkar-e-Tayyeba.
Most of the active militants tend to return to civilian areas for shelter during the winter months when sub-zero temperature and snowfall forces them out of the hideouts in forested areas. The Intelligence network of the security forces is activated in the winter months to track down the militants.