In the Shagul forest of Anantnag district, Indian security personnel gunned down four terrorists on Wednesday, police announced. As of now, the terrorists remain unidentified but speculations suggest they were member of Pakistan based Jaish-e-Mohammed.
According to initial reports, a joint team comprising troops from the Jammu and Kashmir Police, the Army's 3 Rashtriya Rifles battalion as well as the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) busted the terrorists' hideout after launching an impromptu search operation in the Shalgul forest in the morning.
The terrorists first tried to conceal themselves in the forest, but when closely approached by the Indian security officers, they opened fire.
“The encounter started in the Shalgul forest area of Srigufwara in Anantnag. Security forces are on the job,” a police official from the region said.
As per the data compiled by the South Asian Terrorism Portal, a total 15 terrorists have been gunned down so far in 2021. However, more worrisome is the surge in terrorist attacks in Srinagar -- capital city of Jammu and Kashmir. According to Kashmir OSINT, a conflict tracker using open source investigation tools to map violence in the region, there have been 10 gunfights and 24 attacks in the city between January 2020 and 19 February 2021.