Jammu, May 14
Additional companies of troops and the police were rushed to Samah village in the Akhnoor sector to eliminate a group of militants who killed one Army Major, three policemen and one teenaged girl in a fierce gunbattle that took place between the two sides last evening.

The police said that on receipt of information men of the Special Operations Group (SOG) of the police and the Army cordoned off the militant hideout. As the security forces neared the hideout they came under heavy fire. The three men of the SOG died on the spot. Major S.K. Dhiman while trying to save a girl and her father was hit by bullets. Before he succumbed to his wounds he killed one militant.

In the retaliatory fire two militants were killed and one was wounded. The wounded rebel was carried by his colleagues to a safer place.

In the fierce encounter more than seven Army men and five SOG men were wounded. Three other civilians received bullet wounds.

The three SOG men killed in the encounter were Janak Raj, Sathi Ram and Shameem Ahmed.

According to the police, there were more than seven militants in the hideout. Others have escaped to the forest belt and the security forces have been directed to launch massive search operations to nab or eliminate the killers.

The police said after the security forces achieved a series of successes in Poonch and Rajouri districts by eliminating more than 250 rebels in the past four and a half months groups of militants had started fanning to the Akhnoor sector to extend their activities in this belt where people have suffered owing to heavy Pakistani shelling and firing. More than 20,000 people from three areas, including the Pallanwala area, have been living under tents for the past 15 months after their houses were hit by Pakistani shells.

One report said after the troops killed two dreaded activists of the Lashkar-e-Toiba, Abu Muslim Zarar and Abu Akashir, near Surankot, militants have started carving out hideouts in the Akhnoor and Sunderbai areas for kicking up subversive violence.

The security forces eliminating one militant in Mandi tehsil of Poonch district today.

The troops received specific information that two to three militants were seen moving in the forest in Mandi tehsil. Sensing the presence of the security forces, the militants opened heavy volume of automatic fire. The troops immediately swung into action and retaliated. In the ensuing fight the security forces killed one militant and seized one AK rifle along with ammunition. The identity of the slain militant had not been established so far.

Meanwhile, in another incident the security forces averted a major tragedy by timely detection and destruction of two IEDs planted in tandem on the Jammu-Shid-Phagla track in the Surankot area of Poonch district today.

PTI adds from Srinagar: Six persons, including a prosecuting officer and two Lashkar-e-Toiba militants, were killed and three injured in militancy related incidents in the Kashmir valley since Sunday night, a police spokesman said on Monday.

Public prosecutor Mohammad Abdullah Yatoo was shot dead by unidentified militants outside a court at Dooru in Anantnag district on Monday afternoon, the spokesman said.

He said, Yatoo was on his way to court when he was fired upon from pointblank range and was rushed to hospital where he was declared brought dead.

Three militants, including two foreigners associated with the Pakistan-based Lashker-e-Toiba outfit, were killed in two separate encounters with the security forces at Chunti-Mulla in Baramula and Gulgam-Halmatpora in Kupwara on Sunday evening, the spokesman said.

He said while the militants killed at Bandipora were identified as Abu Sikender Ali and Abu Shahad of the Lashkar the militant killed at Gulgam was yet to be identified.