Srinagar: A day ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s rally, two army soldiers were killed in a fierce gunfight with militants in the Chenab valley of the Jammu region on Friday (September 13), reports said.
An army spokesperson said that a gunfight broke out following forces acting on intelligence inputs about the presence of a group of militants in the Chatroo area along Sinthan Top, which falls on the border between Jammu’s Kishtwar and the Anantnag district in the Kashmir valley.
As the forces closed in on the suspected hideout in Naidgam village, about 50 kilometres from the district headquarters in Kishtwar, a group of heavily armed militants opened indiscriminate gunfire at around 3:30 pm on Friday, a senior police official said.
Four army soldiers were injured in the initial exchange of gunfire. They were immediately evacuated from the encounter site and rushed to a medical facility in Udhampur, where two of them reportedly succumbed to injuries.
There was no official confirmation about the number of casualties suffered by the army in the encounter when this report was filed.
Sources said the deployment of security forces had been stepped up recently in the area following increased militant activity in the Chenab valley.
“The area where the encounter took place is an old track that has been used by militants to shuttle between Anantnag, Doda and Kishtwar districts,” sources said, adding that additional forces who were recently deployed in the area were carrying out area domination exercises when militants launched the attack.
The police official said that additional reinforcements were rushed to the area. “The operation is going on,” he said.
According to reports, the group of militants involved in the Kishtwar firefight on Friday were also allegedly behind a similar attack in Doda district in July, in which four army soldiers including an officer were killed.
Friday’s attack took place a day ahead of a BJP rally in the adjoining Doda district of the Chenab valley that will be addressed by Modi, his first in Jammu and Kashmir after the Election Commission announced the three-phased assembly election for the Union territory.
Modi is also scheduled to address rallies in Kashmir and in the Jammu region as part of the BJP’s election campaign.
Amid tight security arrangements, some assembly constituencies in the three districts of the Chenab valley, including Reasi and Ramban, will go to polls in the first phase of the election on September 18, along with the south Kashmir districts of Pulwama, Kulgam, Shopian and Anantnag.
The attack in Kishtwar comes two days after two suspected foreign militants were gunned down in an encounter with security forces in the Kathua district of Jammu on Wednesday.
Once militancy-free, the Jammu region has undergone a dangerous shift following the reading down of Article 370, which has prompted the BJP-led Union government to deploy additional and special forces in the Hindu-majority region of J&K.
In the past three years, more than 50 soldiers, including officers, have been killed in targeted attacks by a group of well-trained militants who have taken refuge in the higher reaches of Jammu’s Pir Panjal region and the Chenab valley.
