A top commander of Harkat-ul-Mujahedin outfit was along with another militant killed in a fire gunfight raging in Sopore area, 48-km northwest of Srinagar, since Tuesday morning. An Army soldier also laid down his life during the encounter.
Police officials identified the slain militant commander as Noaman, a Pakistani national, who had given slip to the security forces during half-a-dozen operations mounted in the Kashmir Valley to get him dead or alive in the recent past. Noaman’s killing comes a day after a top commander of Lashkar-e-Tayyaba Ajmal Shah, alias Abu Darar, also a Pakistani national, was killed in an encounter with the security forces in neighbouring Bandipore district.
Meanwhile, several police officials have been shifted from their present postings, mainly in Baramulla and Anantnag districts following complaints of excessive use of force and mishandling the situations during the ongoing unrest. A group of police officials indicted in a preliminary inquiry ordered by chief minister Omar Abdullah into a shooting incident in which three Anantnag youth were killed earlier this month have been placed under suspension.
Officials said that the members of local police’s counterinsurgency Special Operations Group (SOG) learnt from a source that Noaman and his two accomplices were hiding in the house of district Baramulla’s assistant regional transport officer Abdul Ahad Yatoo at Haigam on the outskirts of Sopore town.