Two LeT militants killed in Pulwama encounter

Two Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) militants, including a commander, were killed in an overnight gun-battle between security forces and ultras in South Kashmir’s Pulwama district.

Police sources said that on a specific tip- off that two to three militants were hiding inside a house, a joint team of Army’s 53 Rashtriya Rifles, para-military CRPF’s 183 Battalion and Special Operations Group (SOG) of the police laid a siege around Gusoo village in Pulwama on Wednesday evening.

“As the security forces launched house-to-house searches, the hiding militants tried to break the cordon by firing indiscriminately, triggering a gunfight which continued for several hours,” they said. “At around 2 am, the militants tried to escape from the house by firing towards security forces. However, in the retaliatory firing two ultras were neutralised.”

The police identified one of the slain militants as Manzoor Ahmad Bhat, a local militant while the other militant is to be believed to be a senior Lashker-e-Toiba commander of Pakistani origin. Two AK-47 rifles, four magazines and other war-like stores were recovered from the site of the encounter, the police said. The police, however, denied rumours that Hizb-ul-Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani was in the area. Social networking sites especially Facebook was flooded on Wednesday evening that Burhan, the poster boy of Hizbul has been trapped in the village.