3 militants killed in 7-hour gunfight

Three Islamic militants were killed and a private house razed in a seven-and-half-hour-long gun battle with security forces in Sonawari area of Jammu and Kashmir’s northern district of Bandipore on Thursday.

This was for the first time in many years that the militants and security forces have clashed in this area once known as a bastion of “Ikhwanis”, former militants who under their leader Muhammad Yusuf Parray or Kuka Parray, after changing sides in the mid-1990s, helped the Army in its counter-insurgency campaign. Parray, who was elected to J&K Assembly in 1996 elections, was gunned down by Hizb-ul-Mujahideen militants in an ambush in September 2003.

The police and Army officials said that the counter-insurgency special operations group (SOG) of local police along with Army’s 13 Rashtriya Rifles mounted a search operation in Hajin Sonawari’s Khosa Mohalla after receiving an alert about the presence of a group of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba militants. As the security forces zeroed in on a two-storey private house owned by one Sannaullah Bhat, they came under a barrage of gunfire from holed-up militants.

During the ensuing encounter, three militants made repeated attempts to flee by opening indiscriminate fire and tossing hand grenades towards the security forces. While intermittent firing between the two sides was on, the security forces used explosives to blow up a portion of the house which resulted into the killing of one militant at 2.40 pm. His accomplice was neutralised in similar act at 5.20 pm, police sources said. Later during the combing operation, the security forces found a third corpse from beneath the debris and said he too was a militant as three weapons were also found at the encounter site.

Several adjoining buildings were damaged during the gunbattle, reports said. Officials said that while the fighting was underway, residents trapped in the area were evacuated and shifted to safer locations by the security forces or they fled on their own.

A senior police officer who was part of the operation claimed that the militants were initially asked to surrender, but they instead targeted the security forces with their AK assault rifles and also lobbed grenades.

Meanwhile, groups of people chanting pro-freedom slogans tried to go close to the encounter site, but were dispersed by the police, using bamboo sticks and bursting teargas canisters, witnesses said. The clashes between surging crowds and the police spread after the killing of the militants, a report from Sonawari said.

This was for the first time in many years that the militants and security forces have clashed in this area once known as a bastion of “Ikhwanies”, former militants who under their leader Muhammad Yusuf Parray or Kuka Parray, after changing sides in the mid-1990s, helped the Army in its counter-insurgency campaign.