Just two days ahead of Republic Day, three militants, including two Pakistanis, were killed in separate encounters with security forces in Jammu and Kashmir on Tuesday.

In the first encounter, security forces gunned down two Pakistani militants affiliated to the Lashkar-e-Toiba outfit in an encounter in central Kashmir’s Ganderbal district.

Sources said following specific information that a group of militants were hiding in Hadoora village of Ganderbal, 27 km from here, army’s 5-Rashtriya Rifles and special operations group (SOG) of Jammu and Kashmir Police surrounded the area early Tuesday morning.

As the search party of security forces was zeroing in on the target, the holed up militants opened fire resulting in an encounter which lasted several hours, they said, and added that in the ensuing gunfight, two militants — both Pakistanis — belonging to Lashkar-e-Toiba militant group were killed.

Army spokesperson Col Manish Pandey confirmed that the two militants were killed in the gunfight and two AK-47 rifles have been recovered from the encounter site. He said that a sanitisation operation is on in the area.

The slain militants have been identified as Abu Anaas and Abu Ali, who, according to police, had infiltrated into Kashmir in 2015 and were involved in several attacks on security forces.

The police have also registered a case against some people for uploading pictures on social networking sites with the concocted information that the bodies of militants had been dragged after the encounter in Ganderbal, a police spokesman said.