A suspected militant was killed during a gunfight with Indian security forces in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama district on Saturday, the police said.
The Kashmir Zone Police, in a tweet, identified the deceased as Sabir Ahmed Dar, a member of the Hizbul Mujaideen extremist group. They also said arms and ammunition were recovered from him.
Another militant, identified as Showkat Ahmad from Pulwama, was critically wounded in the gun battle, Greater Kashmir reported. Though injured, Ahmad managed to escape the security cordon and was later admitted by unidentified individuals to the Shri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital in Srinagar. The daily said, citing sources at the hospital, that Ahmad sustained a bullet injury in his abdomen, and was in a critical condition.
An unidentified police officer told Greater Kashmir that jawans belonging to the 55 Rashtriya Rifles, Central Reserve Police Force and Special Operations Group laid siege to a cluster of houses in Babgund area of Pulwama town, and began door to door search operations around 2 am. Militants hiding in one of the houses opened fire, triggering a gun battle, the officer said. During the encounter, Dar was killed.
Another police officer said a curfew has been imposed in Pulwama town as a precautionary measure.
On Thursday, Mannan Bashir Wani, a PhD scholar at the Aligarh Muslim University who joined militancy in January, was among two Hizbul Mujahideen members killed in an encounter in Shatgund Bala village of Handwara town in Kashmir.
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