The militants slain in a gunbattle with security forces at Maloora village, on the outskirts of Srinagar, on Thursday have been identified as Pakistani nationals Mumtaz Bhai and Yusuf Bhai who, with a third accomplice who could be a local Kashmiri, had been planning some spectacular terror strikes in Srinagar city in the coming days, said officials. The slain militants, as per intelligence inputs, were experts at improvising deadly explosive devices, the officials added. The third militant might still be at large.
Troops of 2 Rashtriya Rifles, SOG personnel and those from the CRPF’s 182 Battalion laid siege to Maloora at dawn on Thursday following a tip-off about the presence of at least three Jaish militants in a private house. “We quickly mounted an operation to flush them out dead or alive. In the final assault one house was blasted off (sic), in which two of the holed-up militants were killed,” said Srinagar SSP Ashiq Bukhari.
He added that the encounter was over but the search for the third militant was still underway.
“He too may have been killed and his corpse could be lying under the debris of the smouldering house, but it is possible that he may have escaped the cordon and, in that case, is hiding somewhere in the area,” said another police officer.
However, witnesses said two private houses were blown up by the security forces. Army gunship helicopters were seen hovering over the encounter scene. One of the holed-up militants had earlier jumped out of the house of a property dealer to take shelter in a neighbouring house. In the final assault both these houses were blown up by the security forces, an official said on condition of anonymity.
Two policemen, Muhammad Ayub and Muhammad Jabbar, the former working as a security guard at the house of local Shia politician-cum-businessman Abid Ansari, and a young girl, Nusrat, were injured by stray bullets at nearby Goripora and Shalteng localities while another girl, Sakina, fell from the first floor of her house and suffered a head injury, police sources said. New Delhi-based Asian News International’s photographer, Sajid Ahmed, received a bullet injury in his hand while covering the fighting and was quickly taken to hospital.