SRINAGAR: Two soldiers, including a Junior Commissioned Officer (JCO), and two terrorists were killed, while another soldier was injured in an encounter in a forest area in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kulgam district on Monday.
A security official said a joint team of police, army, and paramilitary CRPF personnel launched a search operation in the Guddar forest area in south Kashmir’s Kulgam district in the morning.
He said the operation was launched on police input about the presence of 2-3 terrorists in the forest area. As the security men were conducting searches, they came under fire from terrorists hiding in the fire area. The fire was returned by the troops, triggering an encounter.
In the initial exchange of gunfire between the two sides, a terrorist was killed and three army men, including a JCO, were injured. The injured soldiers were evacuated to a military hospital, where two of them, including the JCO, succumbed to
injuries, sources said. The condition of another injured soldier is reported to be stable. The deceased soldiers were identified as Subedar Perbhat Gaur and Lance Naik Narender Sindhu.
As the search operation continued, security personnel again located the terrorists hiding in the forest area. The security official said another terrorist was killed in the gunfight during the day, taking the number of terrorists killed in the day-long firefight to two.
One of the two slain terrorists is said to be Aamir Bashir of Shopian, who had joined militancy in September 2023.
The security forces suspect that one more terrorist is hiding in the area, and a search operation is going on. “We are using drones and other surveillance gadgets for aerial surveillance of the area. Besides, the elite para commandos are also involved in the anti-terror operation,” the security official said.
The encounter took place a month after a 12-day-long anti-terror operation launched by troops in the dense Akhal forest area of Kulgam in August, in which a terrorist and two soldiers were killed.