Anantnag: Two local militants, affiliated with the Lashkar-e-Toiba, were killed Monday in a gunfight with government forces, here in the Anantnag district of South Kashmir, the police have said.
The slain militants were yet to be identified by the police, while this report was being filed.
Additional Director General of Police (ADGP), Vijay Kumar, confirmed the killings and said that two militants belonged to Lashkar-e-Toiba.
“They were involved in several terror crime cases,” Kumar has said.
The gunfight took place in Tengpawa village of Kokernag area, here in the Anantnag district, where government forces had launched a cordon and search operation, late Sunday night, following inputs regarding the presence of militants in the area.
“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 fire was retaliated, triggering a gunfight. The exchange of fire continued through most part of the night and stopped after both the militants were killed Monday morning.
“Bodies of the militants along with arms, ammunition, and some incriminating material were retrieved from the site of the gunfight,” the official said, “The bodies will be sent to North Kashmir for burial after completion of medico-legal formalities,”
The authorities have refused to hand over the 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 generally participate.
Meanwhile, mobile internet services were snapped in parts of the Anantnag district temporarily and were restored soon after the gunfight was concluded.
There have been four gunfights so far in the month of October, leading to the killing of seven militants. The other two gunfights were reported from the Shopian district, wherein five militants were killed. Four of the slain militants in these gunfights were affiliated to LeT and three of them were with Jaish-e-Muhammad.
Nine militants were killed through the month of September in six different gunfights across the Kashmir valley.
More than 145 militants have been killed this year in different gunfights, only 33 of them Pakistani nationals. “The rest of them were locals,” a police official told Kashmir Reader. Militants, on the other hand, have been targeting Kashmiri Pandits, non-locals, policemen on leave, and politically affiliated locals.

Suhail A Shah