Militant holed up near Shiv temple killed

JAMMU: One more terrorist, who was hiding in a house near a Shiva temple on Panjbakhtawar road, was killed here on Monday morning around 10 a.m. after a night-long vigil and cordon by the security forces.
An assistant sub-inspector of the state police, Balwinder Singh, also died in the encounter which had started late on Sunday evening.
With this, the number of security forces killed in the encounter touched two as a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) jawan had died at the Raghunath temple on Sunday evening itself.
The CRPF jawan had tried to stop the lone fidayeen who ran into the temple and lobbed grenades and fired indiscriminately with an automatic weapon. The jawan perhaps could not retaliate because of the presence of a large number of devotees in the temple.
The police pinned down the militant in one corner of the temple and continued evacuating the devotees in ones and twos, some injured, some just shaken badly and some after they had died.
The security forces personnel could not use automatic grenade launcher (AGL) because it could have caused extensive damage to the temple.
The second encounter in a street of the busy Rajinder bazaar, which had also started at 7 pm on Sunday evening, continued till 2.30 am but the security forces continued their cordon. On Monday morning, the encounter began again after 8.30 am and continued for about 90 minutes.
The militant was holed up in an old house which had weak walls and this again forced the police to adopt a cautious approach which stalled the use of AGL. However, the police lobbed up to five hand grenades into the room where the militant was hiding.
A deputy superintendent of police of the paramilitary CRPF was injured as a bullet fired by the militant hit his forearm. Profusely bleeding, he was evacuated from the encounter site and is now undergoing treatment at a hospital here.
A journalist working with a local TV channel had a narrow escape on Sunday evening as a bullet hit his camera. Though injured, his condition was described as stable by his colleagues.
Director-general of police Ashok Suri visited the encounter site when the encounter was still continuing and told reporters that the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) had owned responsibility for the two attacks.
Suri said he received a call from someone who claimed to be speaking on behalf of the LeT. Not only this, the caller also told the DGP that such attacks would continue.