Srinagar, September 12
Two Deputy Commandants of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and two militants were killed and five others injured in a night-long encounter at a camp of the security forces here today.

The encounter started when two militants of the Al-Mansoorian outfit, attacked York Hotel, housing 94 Btn of the CRPF, at Kohna Khan, near Dalgate, here at about 9.20 pm last night. The militants resorted to grenade explosions and heavy fire from automatic weapons when they approached the camp from the rear side under the cover of darkness.

Five CRPF men were injured in the initial attack, while one militant was killed in the retaliatory fire, police sources said. Another militant, holed up inside the building, engaged security personnel in a night-long gunfire. The 12-hour operation was over with the killing of the holed-up militant early this morning. The building was heavily damaged in the encounter.

A spokesman for Al-Mansoorian told some local media agencies here last night that two of its militants, Abdul Waheed, alias Waseem, and Sajjad Bin Abdul Gafoor, alias Abu Moaz, had launched the attack.

The outfit had also owned the responsibility for two earlier suicide attacks on CRPF camps here since July-end. The first attack was carried out on a camp at Leeward Hotel in the Dal Lake area on July 27 evening, in which five CRPF men and two suicide militants were killed. This was followed by a similar attack on a camp in a residential house in the posh Raj Bagh area here on August 4 evening, killing at least nine CRPF men and a militant.