Srinagar: Four militants who were part of a combined group of Hizbul Mujahi-deen and LeT were killed, while three Army jawans and a policeman was wounded in a gunfight in J&K’s southern Pulwama district on Monday, the police said.

The officials said that the fighting broke out during a cordon-and-search operation launc-hed jointly by the Army, J&K police’s counter-insurgency special operations group and the CRPF in Pulwama’s Lassipora village earlier during the day.

The operation, the officials added, was launch-ed on a “credible input” about the presence of militants in the village.

“During searches, terrorists fired upon the search party. The fire was retaliated, thus lea-ding to an encounter,” said a statement issued by the police here.

It identified the slain militants as Zaffar Paul, Tauseef Ahmed Yattoo, Aqib Ahmed Kumhar, and Muhammad Shafi Bhat, all local Kashmiris belonging to the twin districts of Pulwama and Shopian.

“The militants were wanted by law for their complicity in a series of terror crimes, including attacks on security establishments and civilian atrocities,” the police statement said.