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| Pampore encounter ends; 3 militants killed | | |  Jehangir Rashid
Early Times Report
SRINAGAR, Feb 22: The three day long encounter between militants and security forces at Sempora-Pampore in South of Srinagar ended this evening with the death of three militants. With the death of three militants the total casualties in the encounter reached to nine.
Eye-witnesses told Early Times that the security forces personnel led by the army stormed the building of Entrepreneurship Development Institute (EDI) late in the afternoon and killed the three militants hiding inside the building since Saturday evening. The security forces personnel were able to zero in on the hiding militants and killed them in the final assault.
The encounter started in the afternoon on Saturday when the militants launched an attack on the convoy of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) which was on its way to Srinagar from South Kashmir. Two CRPF personnel were killed in the initial burst of fire. Later on three army personnel including two captains and a civilian were also killed in the encounter that lasted for almost 50 hours.
The two CRPF personnel killed in the encounter were identified as Bola Ram and D C Raina while as the three army personnel killed were identified as Captain Pawan Kumar, Captain Tushar Mahajan and Lance Naik Om Prakash. The civilian killed in the shootout was identified as Abdul Gani Mir, resident of Gundipora-Pulwama. He was a gardener at EDI Pampore.
Police sources said that the identity of killed militants has not been established as yet and it is also not confirmed which organization they belonged to. However, it is presumed that the militants were foreigners. It has been learnt that arms, ammunition and other war-like stores were recovered from the possession of the slain militants.
"Since the militants hid themselves on the top floor of the EDI building it became all the difficult for the security forces to kill the militants. It was due to this reason only that the militants could be killed on the third day of the encounter with the security forces suffering casualties during the gunfight," said police sources.
It would be in place to mention here that army pressed the elite para-troopers into service in order to flush out the hiding militants. Un-manned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) were also used to determine the exact position of the militants who changed their position in the multi-storey building of EDI located at Sempora near Pampore on the Srinagar-Jammu national highway.
The EDI building has suffered massive damages during the encounter and it would take some days before the building would be safe for the future operations. Security forces personnel fired hundreds of bullets and scores of grenades on the building in order to flush out the militants. This resulted in damages to the building.
In the meantime, more than one dozen persons mostly youth were injured in clashes between groups of youth and police as well as CRPF personnel in the Pampore area. The protesting youth tried to march towards the encounter site, but were stopped by the police and CRPF personnel. This resulted in injuries to some of the youth belonging to different villages of the Pampore town. |
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