Four policemen and an alleged Lashkar-e-Toiba commander were today killed in an encounter — the first in Srinagar in eight months. The gun battle broke out in Telbal around 10am after police received a tip-off that Lashkar commander Abu Faisal was hiding in a house in the area. “As the police and the CRPF entered the house, the militants came out, lobbed grenades and started firing at us. We have lost four of our men,” said Srinagar police chief Ahfad-ul Mujtaba, who led the operation that went on for nearly three hours. Among the dead police personnel, three were members of the Special Operations Group — Bashir Ahmed, Irshad Ahmed and Mohammed Kabir. The fourth, Sham Singh, was from the CRPF’s 122 Battalion. The police and the CRPF conducted the operation together. A police sub-inspector and a constable were injured. Faisal was believed to have been hiding with another militant. They tried to break the security cordon but were chased and Faisal was killed. The police said the other militant was injured, but escaped. A hunt was launched in the adjoining Chattergam village to nab him. Militant violence in the state has seen a decline, with 770 deaths being reported in 2007 compared with the 1,000-plus casualties the year before. Srinagar has stayed largely peaceful with just nine deaths.
Police sources said the militants were making desperate attempts to recreate their base in the city. Faisal, the sources said, used to operate in Ganderbal district, neighbouring Srinagar, and was tasked to revive militant operations in the Jammu and Kashmir capital. A fortnight ago, the police had busted a Lashkar hideout in Harwan, on the city’s outskirts, from where the militants were allegedly planning to launch suicide attacks in Srinagar. The police claimed to have found police uniforms, sewing machines used for stitching them and pouches to be used by the attackers, besides ammunition
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