Srinagar: Six militants associated with Al-Qaeda’s India cell Ansar Ghuzwat-Ul-Hind were killed in a gun battle with security forces in Tral area of Jammu and Kashmir’s southern Pulwama district on Saturday.
The police said all the slain are local Kashmiris. Ansar Ghuzwat-ul-Hind is headed by a former Hizb-ul-Mujahideen commander Zakir Rashid Bhat alias Zakir Musa. His deputy Sualihah Muhammad Akhnoon is among the dead, the police sources said. The other slain militants have been identified as Rauf Mir, Nadeem Ahmed Sofi, Rasik Mir, Faisal Javed Khanday and Umar Ramzan.
A police spokesman said in Srinagar that based on a “credible input” about the presence of militants in Arampora village of Tral area in Awantipora belt of Pulwama a cordon and search operation was launched by security forces to flush them out on Saturday morning.
“As the searches were going on, the search party was fired upon by the terrorists. The fire was retaliated leading to a gunfight”, he said adding that in the ensuing encounter, six militants were killed.
The officials said that no collateral damage took place during the encounter. They also said that incriminating materials including arms and ammunition were recovered from the site.
Street clashes erupted in some parts of Tral as irate crowds took to the streets to mourn the killings but were confronted by police and other security forces, witnesses said.
