Killing of Pakistan based UN-designated global terrorist Masood Azhar’s sniper active nephew Usman Haider and recovery of a US made M-4 assault carbine from the place he was shot during an encounter last evening in the Chantkar village of Tral in South Kashmir is being considered a major success for the security forces.

A Pakistani terrorist of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), Usman was killed alongwith another local terrorist in a 6 hours long encounter during which large number of miscreants pelted stones at the security forces.

This is within less than one year that another nephew of Masood Azhar has been eliminated in the valley. His other nephew, Tallah Rashid was killed in an encounter in Pulwama of South Kashmir in November last year.

Usman, who was son of Masood Azhar’s elder brother Ibrahim, is believed to have been heading the module that was carrying out sniper attacks in Kashmir for the past one week during which they had targeted an Army soldier and two para-military personnel.

Killing of his two nephews in eleven months has caused a severe setback to Masood Azhar who was released in 1999 from the Jammu jail to swap him with passengers of the Indian Airlines aircraft that was hijacked to Kandhar. Azhar had set up the JeM with active support of the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI and was also mastermind of terror attacks in Mumbai. Usman’s father was involved in hijacking the Indian aircraft flight IC-814 to get Azhar freed.

It is worth mentioning that Azhar had armed both his nephews with the sophisticated M-4 carbines that is a shorter and lighter variant of the M16A2 rifle. The M-4 is air-cooled and direct impingement gas operated, magazine fed carbine with a telescope. The M-4 is also capable of mounting the M203 and M320 grenade launchers. It is being used by United States Armed Forces.

Sources said that Usman had infiltrated in Kashmir a few months ago to revive the JeM set up by his uncle. Security agencies believe that he had activated a four member sniper cell of JeM during the past week. His younger brother, Umer Haider, is also believed to have infiltrated in the valley three months ago.

Security forces have alerted the safety setup of VIPs in view of the snipers in the valley.

The house from where Usman was targeting the security forces was razed to the ground as they did not want to give him any opportunity to escape under the cover of heavy stone pelting by miscreants who had gathered there from nearby villages. However, the security forces maintained cool and did not fire at the stone pelters.

It is worth mentioning that the JeM, Kashmiri version of Al-Qaeda affiliated Ghazwat-ul-Hind, Al-Badr, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and Tehreek-ul-Mujahideen have become active in the valley after the security forces eliminated several top commanders of Lashkar-e-Tayiba (LeT) and Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) during the “Operation All-Out” that was launched lat year particularly in the South Kashmir.

Police said that besides the M-4 carbine, an AK 47 rifle was also recovered from the encounter spot. The other slain terrorist has been identified as a local Showkat Ahmad.