Srinagar: An army soldier succumbed to injuries after he was critically wounded in an encounter with militants in Udhampur district of Jammu and Kashmir late night on Friday (September 19), officials have said.

An army official said that a fierce gunfight erupted between a group of three to four heavily armed militants and security forces in Dudu Basantgarh area in the upper reaches of Udhampur district along its border with Doda district of Chenab valley around 10 pm.

The encounter broke out after a joint team of police, army and paramilitary troopers launched a search operation following specific intelligence inputs about the presence of militants in the area.

As the search party was closing in on the suspected hideout, the militants opened fire, triggering a fierce gunfight in which one army soldier was critically injured, reports said. “He was referred to a military hospital in a critical state where he succumbed today morning,” the official said.

The identity of the soldier was not immediately known. The army official said that additional reinforcements have been rushed to the area to prevent the perpetrators from escaping and a massive search operation was underway.

According to reports, four militants of the proscribed Jaish-e-Mohammad outfit involved in the encounter have been encircled by security forces.

The encounter in Udhampur broke out hours after an army team had exchanged gunfire with militants in Dul area of Kishtwar district in Jammu, following which a massive search operation was launched which was underway when this report was filed.

“In an intelligence-based operation in the general area of Kishtwar, alert troops of #WhiteKnightCorps established contact with terrorists at around 8 pm on 19 Sep 25. Exchange of fire took place. Operations are currently in progress,” the army’s Jammu-based White Knight Corps said in a post on X.

The encounter in Kishtwar comes more than a month after militants and security forces traded gunfire at each other in the same area on August 10. After the exchange, militants, one of whom was reportedly injured in firing, had escaped from the area.

On September 8, two army soldiers were killed in south Kashmir’s Kulgam district in an encounter in which an unidentified militant was gunned down while another soldier suffered injuries.

Earlier, an army soldier was killed on August 13 in a fierce gunfight with a group of militants who tried to infiltrate along the Line of Control (LoC) in north Kashmir’s Baramulla district.

The latest killing in Udhampur is the seventh casualty suffered by the army since August amid a sharp uptick in insurgency-related violence in Jammu and Kashmir.

Two soldiers were killed by militants while two more suffered injuries in the intervening night of August 8 and 9 in south Kashmir’s Kulgam district where security forces battled a group of heavily armed militants for 12 days in one of the longest anti-insurgency operations in the valley.

At least 16 members of various security forces and 30 civilians have been killed in 30 incidents of militancy-related violence in Jammu and Kashmir this year in which 40 militants have been gunned down, according to South Asia Terrorism Portal.

Since 2021, security forces have faced some of the deadliest attacks by heavily armed and trained militants who emerge and later disappear into the woods of the Pir Panjal mountains which fall along the Line of Control.

Due to the treacherous terrain and dense forest cover, security forces have struggled to hunt down the perpetrators on most occasions.

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