SRINAGAR: One more militant was killed in the ongoing gunbattle with the security forces in Sopore area in north Kashmir’s Baramulla district today, police say, taking the death toll of militants to six since the encounter started early Tuesday.
Firing resumed after a night of lull at Saidapora village near north Kashmir’s Sopore town, which shut down in mourning for a local militant who was among the five ultras killed on Tuesday.
Police sources say they came under fire early this morning as they approached the site of the gunfight to clear debris. They retaliated and one militant was killed, they said.
“Bodies of six militants have been recovered from the encounter site so far,” a police spokesperson quoted Superintendent of Police, Sopore, Imtiaz Mir as saying.
Unconfirmed reports said a major is among the two army men wounded in the fresh firing.
The six militants who were killed belonged to the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group, police sources say. One among them, Athir Yusuf Dar was a resident of Bismillah Colony, Model Town, Sopore.
Witnesses say shops in the town were closed and rock-throwing youth engaged with the police who fired teargas shells.
The combing operation was on till last reports came in.
‘Serious blow’
Inspector General of Police, SM Sahai said the Lashkar militants’ killing has rendered a serious blow to militancy in the valley’s northern area.
“It is a recent group that moved from North Kashmir, as LeT was depleted in Sopore. The elimination of these militants [is] a major success in the fight against militancy,” Sahai told reporters.
There has been a surge in gunbattles over a period of recent months in the valley, where authorities say a 23-year-old armed conflict is on its lowest ebb eversince it erupted in 1989.
At least nine militants have died in three gunfights in the past five days.
‘Nothing but arms’
Kashmir’s top militant commander Syed Salahuddin, who heads an amalgam of several militant outfits, recently warned the region’s separatist leadership not to mislead people by speaking too much about “peaceful struggle”.
He instead said only arms will help solve the Kashmir issue.
“They (separatist leaders) know it more than us that military occupations have never ended with peaceful struggles nor does it seem to end like that in future.”
Moderate separatists headed by Mirwaiz Umer Farooq are right now on a visit to Pakistan to meet with the leadership in search for fresh solutions to the Kashmir issue, which has been a bone of contention between India and Pakistan for more than six decades now.
Salahuddin said the occupation, the term used by the separatists for the Army’s presence in the state, would not merely end by “political movements, seminars and conferences”.
He cited the examples of Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam, saying Americans left these place because of armed struggles.
