Two encounters underway in J&K’s Rajouri, Baramulla; one terrorist killed

With an encounter between security forces and terrorists already underway in Jammu and Kashmir’s Rajouri, a terrorist was killed.

In a separate encounter that broke out on Saturday in Baramulla. Kashmir Zone police said the encounter started at the Karhama Kunzer area of Baramulla.

Meanwhile, the counter-terror operation in the Kandi forest in Rajouri, in which five soldiers have been killed in action, is currently underway. The contact with terrorists was established at 1.15am on Saturday and the firing was exchanged, defence spokesperson Lt Col Devender Anand said.

Five Indian soldiers were killed and an officer was wounded in a terror ambush in the Kandi forest area on Friday morning.

“Three more soldiers who were injured earlier have unfortunately succumbed to their injuries. A total of five soldiers have lost their lives in the joint operation in Rajouri, J&K,” said the officials.

Four of the soldiers killed on Friday were commandos from the 9 Para (Special Forces) while the fifth was from a Rashtriya Rifles battalion, people aware of the matter told HT. The army identified them as Havildar Neelam Singh from Akhnoor, Naik Arvind Kumar from Palampur, Lance Naik Ruchin Singh Rawat from Gairsain in Uttarakhand, Paratrooper Siddhant Chettri from Darjeeling, and Paratrooper Pramod Negi from Sirmaur in Himachal Pradesh.

The soldiers were part of army squads trying to hunt down the terrorists responsible for the April 20 ambush.

Indian Army is conducting relentless intelligence-based operations to flush out a group of terrorists involved in an ambush on an army truck in the Tota Gali area of Bhata Dhurian in the Jammu region, an official release stated.

“On specific information about the presence of terrorists in the Kandi Forest in the Rajouri Sector, a joint operation was launched on May 3, 2023. At about 7:30 am on May 5, 2023, a search team established contact with a group of terrorists well entrenched in a cave. The area is thickly vegetated with rocky and steep cliffs,” the official release stated.