The official’s said firing was halted in the night and the area was put under cordon. Firing resumed on Thursday morning, and two terrorist were killed, they said and added that the operation is in its final phase.

Top Let Commander Among Two Terrorists Killed

A top Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) commander — believed to be the mastermind behind two major terrorist attacks this year — was gunned down by security forces in Rajouri district of Jammu and Kashmir along with his associate on Thursday, even as one more soldier lost his life, culminating a 31-hour-long joint operation which had already led to the deaths of two army Captains and two soldiers a day earlier.

Two terrorists, including a top LeT commander trained in Afghanistan, were killed in a gunfight with security forces on Thursday in Jammu and Kashmir’s Rajouri district, officials said. On Wednesday, four army personnel, including two captains, were killed and two others injured in the operation against the terrorists in the Dharmsal belt’s Bajimaal area.

The slain army personnel have been identified as Captain MV Pranjal, Captain Shubham Gupta, Havildar Abdul Majid, Lance Naik Sanjay Bisht and Paratrooper Sachin Laur. Captain MV Pranjal from Mangalore in Karnataka, and Captain Shubham Gupta of Agra in Uttar Pradesh, both from the 63 Rashtriya Rifles, were killed in a fierce gunbattle on Wednesday along with Havaldar Abdul Majid of 9 Para (Special Forces) from Ajote in Poonch, Lance Naik Sanjay Bisht of Halli Padli in Nainital of Uttarakhand.

According to security officials, the LeT Commander, identified by the code name Qari, had been active in the Rajouri-Poonch region with his group for the past year. He was gunned down in a fierce gun battle in the Bajimaal area of Dharmsal in the Rajouri District, officials reported. A major and two jawans were among the injured Army personnel, and they were shifted to the Army’s Command Hospital in Udhampur, police added.

The two border districts of Rajouri and Poonch in Jammu, south of the Pir Panjal, and especially the former, have become a hotspot for Pakistan-sponsored terrorism over the past two years or so, a period in which they have seen nine major attacks, resulting in the deaths of eight terrorists, 29 security personnel and nine civilians.

On September 11, Northern Army commander Lt General Upendra Dwivedi had said that nearly 200 terrorists were waiting to cross the LoC from Pakistan. “They are waiting to infiltrate our territory, but our alert troops are deployed at the borders and we are trying to eliminate them there itself,” he said at the time.