Srinagar: At least four security personnel, including an Army Major, and two Jaish-e-Mohammed militants were killed in an ongoing encounter in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama district. Another militant holed up in a house in the Pinglina area is still alive and the gunfight is currently underway.
According to sources, the slain terrorists in today’s encounter included Abdul Rashid Ghazi and Kamran — the two Jaish commanders who masterminded the Pulwama terror attack which claimed lives of 40 CRPF personnel.
According to sources, the two trained Adil Ahmed Dar – the suicide bomber who carried out the dastardly attack. Also, they provided explosives and specific inputs about the movement of the CRPF contingent in Jammu and Kashmir’s Lethpora area.
Ghazi, an Afghan war veteran and IED expert, was a trusted lieutenant of Masood Azhar and was believed to be operating from the forest and hills in Tral and Pulwama.
The four Army jawans, injured in the encounter which broke out on the intervening night of February 17 and 18, succumbed to their injuries on Monday morning. Also, a civilian was also reportedly killed in the encounter.
The martyred security personnel belonged to the 55 Rashtriya Rifles. They haven been identified as Major VS Dhoundiyal, Havaldar Sheo Ram, Sepoy Ajay Kumar and Sepoy Hari Singh.
The gunfight started late on Sunday after security forces, including the Rashtriya Rifles (RR), Special Operations Group (SOG) of the state police and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), surrounded the village following a tip off that Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) militants — the same group that carried out the February 14 attack leaving a toll 49 troopers — were hiding in the area.
The encounter had stopped on Monday morning, but resumed after terrorists opened fire on the security forces during the search operation.
The deaths of the four jawans takes the death toll of security personnel to 45 in the last four days.
The gunfight between the terrorists and security forces comes four days after a suicide bomber, belonging to the Jaish-e-Moahmmed, rammed an explosive-laden vehicle into one of the vans of a CRPF convoy at the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway, killing at least 40 jawans.
