Two Suspected Militants Killed in Encounter in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kupwara
Srinagar: The Indian Army on Saturday (November 8) claimed to have gunned down two suspected militants along the Line of Control (LoC) in north Kashmir’s frontier Kupwara district.
A Srinagar-based defence spokesperson said that a counter-terror operation was launched by a joint team of the army and Jammu and Kashmir police on Saturday morning following intelligence inputs about the presence of militants in the Keran sector of Kupwara.
During the operation codenamed ‘Op Pimple’, the spokesperson said that the joint team noticed suspicious activity while carrying out searches in the area following which a group of suspected militants fired indiscriminately at the security forces.
Additional forces were rushed to the area to prevent the suspects from fleeing and during the exchange of gunfire, two suspected militants were gunned down, the spokesperson said, adding that the operation was going on in the area.
“Search of the area in progress,” the Srinagar-based Chinar Corps said in a post on X.
The identities of the suspects and their affiliation have not been revealed by authorities so far. It was also not clear whether their bodies have been retrieved yet and the recoveries made by security forces from the slain.
The operation comes nearly a month after two suspected militants were gunned down in a forward area on October 14 in ‘Op Amar’ in Macchail sector of Kupwara district along the LoC.
The 700-odd kilometre de-facto border which splits Jammu and Kashmir into two witnesses a spike in infiltration attempts before the onset of harsh winter when heavy snowfall makes the mountain passes inaccessible for infiltrators, according to security agencies.
Earlier, two soldiers went missing in the Kishtwar forest range in the intervening night of October 6 and 7 when an army team faced harsh weather and whiteout conditions. Their bodies were later recovered by search teams.
On September 19, an army soldier who was critically wounded in an encounter in Dudu Basantgarh area in the upper reaches of Udhampur district along the border with Chenab valley succumbed to injuries.
According to an estimate by South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP), 42 suspected militants have also been gunned down in encounters with security forces in different parts of Jammu and Kashmir in 2025.
At least 18 members of various security forces and 30 civilians have also been killed in 33 incidents of militancy-related violence in the Union territory this year, according to SATP.
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