Abid Bashir
Srinagar (NVI): Three terrorists of Hizbul Mujahideen including a top commander of the terror outfit were killed in an encounter with security forces at Turkwangan village of south Kashmir’s Shopian district, defence officials said today.
They said that acting on a specific tip-off about the presence of terrorists in Turkwangan, joint teams of police, Army and CRPF laid a siege early this morning. “When the forces zeroed in on a suspected spot where terrorists were hiding, heavy volume of fire came under, triggering an encounter,” the officials said.
Three of them were killed after an hour-long exchange of fire between the two sides.
Defence spokesman in Srinagar, Colonel Rajesh Kalia, said that the three terrorists were killed in an operation at village Turkwangan, Shopian. “Two Ak-47-riffles and one INSAS riffle has been recovered from the encounter spot. Operation is still going on in the area,” he said.
A police official said that one of the terrorists was a top commander of Hizbul Mujahideen and has been identified as Zubair-ul-Islam. Today’s encounter is the fifth such encounter in the past ten days in South Kashmir in which 19 terrorists have been killed.
This year so far, 92 terrorists including top commanders of Hizbul Mujahideen, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Toiba were killed which includes Reyaz Naikoo, the chief operational commander of Hizb, Bashir Koka of Lashkar and Abdur Rehman alias Fouji Bhai of Pakistan, who was an IED expert of Jaish.
Figures suggest that 60 terrorists were killed alone since the outbreak of COVID-19 in Kashmir on March 20.
