Srinagar: In a major breakthrough for security forces, six heavily armed Pakistani terrorists have been eliminated in three separate encounters in the last 48 hours in an area close to the LoC in Jammu’s Poonch district.

A senior official said that modern detection and surveillance technology including unmanned aerial vehicles were used to track down the terrorists.

 Senior Army and Police officers said that the operation to intercept and eliminate a group of the armed intruders was launched after gathering specific information about their infiltration attempt in Krishna Ghati sector of Poonch during the intervening night of 16 and 17 July. In the gunfight early in the morning on 17 July, two terrorists were killed.

In another operation, troops launched ‘Operation Trinetra-II’ in Shindara and Maidana areas of the Surankote tehsil of Poonch in the afternoon on Monday. Late in the evening two heavily armed terrorists were killed in the encounter. In another exchange of gunfire early in the morning on Tuesday (18 July), two more terrorists of the group were shot dead. With this, a total of six terrorists were gunned down in the encounters spread over two days in Poonch, close to the LoC.

The Nagrota-Jammu based White Knight Corps flashed in a tweet: “Operation Trinetra II. In a major cordon and search operation, acting on specific intelligence, four terrorists were eliminated in a joint operation by the Indian Army and Jammu and Kashmir Police near Sindarah and Maidana villages in Surankote tehsil of Poonch district.” It added that four AK rifles, two pistols and other materials were recovered from the two sites of the encounters in Surankote, Poonch.

“We believe all the six terrorists killed in the three encounters in the last 48 hours are Pakistani cadres of Jaish-e-Mohammad but the process of their identification and group affiliation is still underway,” said an officer.

While Monday’s encounter took place in an area where 5 soldiers were killed in an unprecedented ambush on 20 April 2023, Tuesday’s twin gunfights were reported from Surankote area where 5 soldiers, including one JCO, were killed in an encounter on 11 October 2021.

This is for the first time in around two years of terror strikes in the Poonch-Rajouri belt of Jammu that six terrorists have been eliminated. The security forces, police or civilians did not suffer any damage in Monday’s and Tuesday’s encounters. “There’s absolutely no collateral damage. Both our operations were launched on specific information regarding the terrorists’ presence and movement”, said a senior officer.

In a series of 5 major strikes from 11 October 2021 to 5 May 2023, terrorists killed 24 Indian Army soldiers, including some officers. They also killed 7 civilians, almost all were children, in twin attacks at Dhangri, Rajouri, on 1 January 2023. Terrorists did not suffer any damage other than the death of the two Fidayeen who got killed in a suicide attack on an Army camp at Pargal Darhal in Rajouri district on 11 August 2022. Four soldiers were killed in this strike.