Indian security forces have killed four militants in two separate gun battles in the restive region of Indian-held Kashmir (IHK), including a ‘most wanted’ commander from a Pakistan-based group, police said.
In the first encounter, two militants were identified on Thursday in the village of Keller, 50 kilometres (31 miles) south of the main city of Srinagar, police superintendent Mumtaz Ahmad told AFP.
A top local commander of the Pakistan-based Jaish-i-Mohammad militant outfit named as Qari Zubair was killed in the ensuing fire fight along with his bodyguard.
“Qari Zubair was active in south Kashmir for the last five years and was one of the most wanted foreign militants,” the police officer told AFP late Thursday, adding that Zubair was a Pakistani.
In April this year, local Jaish-i-Mohammad chief Sajjad Afghani and his bodyguard were shot dead by police in a gunfight along the banks of Dal Lake in Srinagar, the summer capital of the region.
In a separate gunfight, Indian security forces shot dead two militants during a counter-insurgency operation Friday at village Nopour in Sopore town, 55 kilometres north of Srinagar.
“The identity of the deceased could not be ascertained as the search operation was still going on when last reports were received,” a police spokesman said. The latest killings took to eight the number of suspected militants shot dead by Indian troops in the Himalayan region since Monday. India blames Pakistan for backing the militants in Kashmir, a charge Islamabad denies.
