Two Army jawans injured
Srinagar: Five separatist militants including one of the most wanted and longest surviving commander of Hizb-ul-Mujahideen were killed and two Army jawans injured in a fierce gunfight that took place early Thursday in a remote village of Jammu and Kashmir 's southern Kulgam district, officials said here.
The police have identified the Hizb commander as Farooq Ahmed Bhat alias Nali and said that he was involved in many terror activities. “There are as many as 37 FIRs registered against Farooq Bhat in different police stations of the Valley which will tell you how dangerous he was,” said DIG (south Kashmir) Javed Ahmad Mattoo.
The fighting broke out during a cordon-and-search operation launched in Kadder village of Kulgam's Behibagh area jointly by the Army's 34 Rashtriya Rifles (RR), J&K police's counterinsurgency Special Operations Group (SOG) and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) at around 3.30 am on Thursday after receiving "credible input" about the presence of militants there, the police sources said.
The officials said that as the joint team of the security forces approached the suspected spot the hiding terrorists opened fire from multiple locations, triggering an encounter. During the initial exchange of fire, two security personnel were injured, they said, adding that they were quickly evacuated to Srinagar’s 92-Base military hospital and that their condition was ‘stable’.
A senior commander of the RR said that before taking on the holed-up militants, the security forces evacuated the civilians of the area to a safer location. “Later, five terrorists -all associated with Hizb-ul-Mujahideen and involved in a series of terror and criminal acts- were killed in a six-hour-long operation,” he said. He also claimed that the Army and J&K police were for the past two months “chasing” the slain Hizb commander who was active in the Kulgam-Shopian region for quite some time.
The Army commander said that Nali who had joined the Hizb in 2015 promoted radicalisation not only in the southern parts of Kashmir but the entire Valley. “With the killing of these five terrorists, the Hizb has been wiped out not only in Kulgam and Shopian districts, but it is a major blow suffered by the main terror outfit of J&K,” he claimed.
DIG Mr. Javed identified the other slain militants as Mushtaq Ahmed Yatoo, Irfan Yaqub, Aadil Hajam and Yasir Javed. He said that all the five were residents of Kulgam and associated with the Hizb.
