Five soldiers and three militants killed in Kashmir in the past 24 hours

Kashmir is simmering, with five soldiers and three militants killed in encounters in the past 24 hours. On October 11, at least five personnel of the security forces, including a Junior Commissioned Officer (JCO), were killed in a gun battle with heavily armed terrorists in a forested area at Surankote in Poonch district. The development came amid a spate of targeted civilian killings over the past week, most of them from the minority Hindu community.

Intelligence reports on October 11 indicated that four or five militants were sheltering in the forested area near the Line of Control (LoC) and the security forces launched a cordon-and-search operation. Army spokesperson Lt Col. Devender Anand said: “In the ensuing firefight during the ongoing encounter with terrorists, a JCO and four soldiers of Indian Army suffered critical injuries. The critically injured were evacuated to the nearest medical facility but they succumbed to their injuries.”

The personnel who lost their lives were identified as Jaswinder Singh, Mandeep Singh, Gajjan Singh, Saraj Singh and Vaisakh H.

In a separate incident in Shopian, three militants of The Resistance Front (TRF) were gunned down by security personnel during an encounter that lasted through the intervening night of October 11 and October 12.

Following tip-offs, security forces launched a cordon-and-search operation in Tulran in the Imamsahab area of Shopian in South Kashmir on October 11, a police official told mediapersons. One of the slain militants was involved in the recent killing of a non-local street hawker here, the police said.