SRINAGAR: Police say they have killed two militants of the Lashkar-e-Taiba outfit who, they say, were involved in a shootout at a hotel in the city outskirts two months ago.
A policeman also has died, they say.
Police sources told our correspondent that a search party of the police alongwith the Army’s Rashtriya rifles and the CRPF came under fire at Dodhipora village at around 6 pm.
“The operational parties pursued them and killed both the militants in the open paddy fields between Dodhipora and Kanipora,” said a police statement at 7: 20 pm.
“The slain militants were later identified as District commander of LeT outfit Mudisir Ahmad Sheikh @ Mawyia resident of Yamrach and Tamim, a Pakistani militant. Both the militants were involved in Silver Star shoot out in Srinagar on 19th October, 2012,” the statement read.
The policeman killed has been identified as Head Constable Niyaz Ahmad.
In October, two people were killed after unidentified gunmen fired at the Silver Star hotel at Nowgam in the city outskirts. Both of the dead worked at the hotel.
‘Regrouping?’
The gunbattle in south Kashmir comes days after six militants of the Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group were killed in two days of fighting with security forces in north Kashmir’s Saidapora village.
Inspector General of Police, SM Sahai said the Lashkar militants’ killing was 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.
But a look at the militants who have died during gunfights across the valley in recent months shows an increasing trend of young locals, mostly educated, having joined militant ranks, particularly the LeT.
One of the militants who died at Saidapora was Athir Yousuf Dar, a local who had joined the group barely a year ago.
“The new recruits prefer to join the LeT for attacking tactics rather than indigenous group of the Hizbul Mujahideen, which is lying low for past several years now,” Hindustan Times quoted police sources as having said.
Also Read: In 2012, Lashkar baits 50 young, literate recruits in Kashmir
‘Nothing but arms’
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 just more than a week.
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.
