In a clean and professional operation, security forces instead of firing bullets on Friday tossed teargas shells inside a mosque to force two hiding terrorists to come out and get eliminated. With this, eight terrorists have been eliminated in two separate encounters that stretched for about 30 hours in south Kashmir.

At Meez Pampore, security forces eliminated the two Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terrorists holed up inside a mosque since yesterday. One terrorist was eliminated on Thursday. There was “no use of firing and IEDs and only tear smoke shells were used to maintain sanctity of the mosque”, the police said. Three terrorists were killed in Awantipora area of district Pulwama and five of a mixed group of Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) and Lashkar-e-Tayiba (LeT) were killed in Shopian district.

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“Our soldiers took full care of the sanctity of the mosque and tear gas bullets were used to evacuate the terrorists from the mosque. Both the terrorists were given a chance to surrender but were killed when they continued firing, said Kashmir’s IGP Vijay Kumar.

J&K DGP Dilbag Singh said that residents of the area and the masjid committee have complimented the Army, CRPF and police for exercising restraint. The Imam of Jamia Masjid, Fayaz Ahmad on behalf of locals of Meej-Pampore thanked and appreciated the police and security forces for their patient role in ensuring zero damage to the mosque where the encounter took place.

GOC 15 Corps Lt General BS Raju, DGP Dilbag Singh and senior officers of the CRPF in a media briefing in Srinagar gave details of the two encounters and the security scenario in the J&K union territory.

DGP Police Dilbag Singh said that there was no collateral damage during both these operations. This is the fifth encounter in Shopian during this month.

More than two dozen terrorists have been killed by security forces in Jammu and Kashmir in the last two weeks. All of these killed terrorists are locals. Of the 49 new recruits who got enrolled into ranks of terrorism, 27 have been neutralised. It doesn’t give us any pleasure to neutralise these boys but if anybody takes up arms and causes harm to others, we’ll do what we’re doing, said Lt. General Raju.

The top officers of security forces said that several terror handlers engaged in recruitment of Kashmiri youth in militancy have been arrested with the support of local people. This has resulted in drastically reducing fresh recruitment of youth in terror ranks. They said that the youth of Kashmir has a bright future and they should not stray into terrorism.