Three police personnel have been killed in action during an encounter with terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kathua district, sources said on Thursday. Two of the terrorists have also been shot dead while three to four terrorists are still holed up.

Five security personnel have also been injured and are undergoing treatment at a hospital.

Teams from the Army, the National Security Guard, the Border Security Force, Police, the Special Operations Group, and the Central Reserve Police Force had been carrying out searches in the area for the past four days. There was an exchange of fire on Sunday and a local resident had informed the police on Tuesday that two men in army uniform had asked her for water while they were having food in the area.

“Contact has been re-established with militants in the forest area of Juthana under police station Rajbagh in Kathua,” an official told news agency IANS, adding that there had been no exchange of fire since Sunday.

The operation was supported by helicopters, drones, bulletproof vehicles, and sniffer dogs and security agencies had questioned several people and picked up three suspects. On Tuesday, the forces had recovered two grenades among other material.

The tracksuits found among a large cache of ammunition and other materials in the Sanyal forests were identical to those worn by the four Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) terrorists killed in the Assar forests and Doda in June and August last year, the IANS report said. 

Sunday’s Gunfight

The operation, led by Jammu and Kashmir Director General of Police Nalin Prabhat, was launched on Sunday evening in the Hiranagar sector. The Special Operations Group of the J&K Police had received intelligence about terrorists hiding inside a ”dhok” (enclosure) in a nursery in Sanyal village, roughly 5 km from the International Border with Pakistan, officials said. 

The hiding terrorists opened fire and a gunfight followed, lasting over half an hour. 

The terrorists are believed to have inflitrated into India on Saturday.