Srinagar, Oct 9: Two militants were killed in a fierce gunfight with Indian soldiers in Indian administered Kashmir on Sunday.
Police sources said acting on a tip off, police and army men launched a joint search operation in Chatergul, Kangan, some 25 kms North of Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian administered Kashmir in the wee hours today.
“After plugging off all the possible escape routes, the soldiers zeroed-in on the residential house of one Mohammad Subhan Mir son of Abdul Gani Mir and asked the militants hiding there to surrender,” they said.
The militants present in the house turned down the surrender offer and fired from automatic weapons towards the search party. “The fire was returned by the soldiers, triggering an encounter. In the ensuing firefight, which continued for about seven hours, two militants were killed,” they said. “The house, where from militants were firing on the soldiers, was damaged in the encounter.”
A police official said bodies of both the deceased militants were retrieved. “We also recovered an AK 47 rifle from the encounter site,” he said adding the search operation is going on.
Meanwhile, the deceased militants were buried in a local graveyard, where hundreds of people attended their funeral prayers.
Although identity and group affiliation of the militants was not immediately known, a senior police officer said preliminary investigations have revealed that they were foreigners.