Anantnag: Four local militants, three of them affiliated to Jaish-e-Muhammad and another to the Lashkar-e-Toiba, were killed in two separate gunfights on Wednesday here in Shopian district, police said. The two gunfights took place in Drach and Mool villages.
The militants slain in the Drach gunfight have been identified by a police source as Saqib Bhat alias Hanan Bin Yaqoob of Karimabad in Pulwama district; Jamshed Magray of Rajpora in Pulwama; and Zubair Wani of Dompora in Shopian. “All three of them were JeM operatives,” the source said.
Additional Director General of Police (ADGP) Vijay Kumar confirmed the killings and said that Hanan and Jamshed were involved in the killing of an SPO recently in Pinglina village of Pulwama district.
“They were also involved in the killing of a non-local labourer,” Kumar said.
The militant killed in the Mool gunfight has been identified as Arif Ahmad, a resident of Heff Shirmal in Shopian district, the police source said, adding, “He was affiliated with Lashkar.”
The first of the two gunfights started in Drach village late Tuesday evening, soon after a cordon and search operation was launched in the area following specific inputs regarding the presence of militants in the area, according to police.
“Contact was established with the holed up militants and they were asked to lay down their arms. They, however, opened indiscriminate fire which was retaliated, triggering a gunfight,” a senior police official from the area said.
He said that the operation was concluded in the wee hours of Wednesday morning with the killing of all three militants. “By then another gunfight had started in Mool village, where a militant of the Lashkar-e-Toiba was killed and the gunfight was concluded,” the official said.
He said that the bodies of all four militants were retrieved along with arms, ammunition, and some incriminating material. “Bodies will be sent to north Kashmir for a burial, after completion of all medico-legal formalities,” the official said.
The authorities have refused to hand over bodies of slain militants to their families, citing Covid protocol, since April 2020. The practice of burying militants at undisclosed locations in presence of a few family members has continued ever since. This has prevented people from holding massive funeral prayers for slain militants, wherein tens of thousands of people would normally participate.
With these two gunfights, the number of gunfights in October has gone up to three, all of them in Shopian district, leading to the killing of five militants. Two of the slain militants were members of Lashkar-e-Toiba and the rest of them were affiliated with JeM.
Nine militants were killed throughout the month of September in six different gunfights across Kashmir valley.
More than 145 militants have been killed this year in different gunfights, only 33 of them Pakistani nationals. Militants, on the other hand, have been targeting Kashmiri Pandits, non-locals, policemen on leave, and politically affiliated locals.

Suhail A Shah