Security forces and terrorists exchanged fire twice briefly within a span of four hours in a forest area in Jammu and Kashmir's Doda district, officials said on Wednesday.
The encounter took place when the troops of Rashtriya Rifles and Special Operations Group of J&K Police launched a joint cordon and search operation at Dhari Gote Urarbagi in Desa forest belt, some 55 km from Doda town, late Monday evening, the officials said.
The gunned-down terrorists have been identified as Abid Wagay, a resident of Rawalpora Shopian, and Shahjahan Mir, hailing of Amshepora Shopian, a police spokesman said.
They will now be called Khaddam-ul-Islam and Jamiat-ul-Ansar respectively.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a review meeting with Union Home Minister Amit Shah, National Security Advisor (NSA) Ajit Doval, Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla and top intelligence establishment over the Nagrota encounter in which four terrorists were neutralised, government sources said.
Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist Shahid Latif, the mastermind of the 2016 attack on the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot, and his brother were gunned down by unidentified assailants outside a mosque in Pakistan's Sialkot district on Wednesday, officials said.
Security forces faced stone-pelting during the operation but exercised maximum restraint.
The listed terrorists have been identified as Ashiq Hussain Ganaie of Panjran Pulwama and Imran Ahmad Bhat of Arihal Pulwama.
Ranneeti: Balakot And Beyond veers between intriguing and boring, observes Deepa Gahlot.
"The 'red bag' belonged to one of the hijackers, it contained explosives, and possibly, real passports, too.
In a joint statement released after talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Donald Trump, the two nations also called on Islamabad to "expeditiously bring to justice the perpetrators of the 26/11 Mumbai, Pathankot, and other cross-border terrorist attacks perpetrated by Pakistan-based groups."
'This is in its own interest.' 'Only the State must have the monopoly of power in the country.'
'Militias have no place in democracies,' says Shuja Nawaz, Distinguished Fellow at the Atlantic Council, the Washington, DC-based think-tank.
The gunfight, lasting more than an hour, took place at Jaddan Bata village in the Kastigarh area around 2 am when the terrorists opened fire on a temporary camp established in a government school for the ongoing search operation, they said.
Terrorists fired indiscriminately on a police party near Nowgam bypass Friday morning, a police official said, adding three policemen were injured in the attack, two of them later succumbed. They said the terrorists have been identified and will be neutralised soon.
JeM, which counts Atlantic Airline bombing plotter and Al-Qaeda suspect Rashid Rauf as a member, has occupied a 4.5 acre-land outside the populated town of Bahawalpur to train jihadists in warfare, The Telegraph reports.
The Nation said one of the two bombers involved in the suicide attack belonged to the banned Jaish-e-Mohammed or its breakaway group Khudam-ul-Islam.
Taken by surprise when heavily armed men ambushed their convoy but quickly gathering themselves, jawans of the 22 Garhwal regiment fired more than 5,100 rounds to protect their injured colleagues and forced the terrorists to retreat into Kathua's wooded hills, officials said.
A self-styled divisional commander of the Jaish-e-Mohammad was killed and nine security personnel were injured in an encounter in Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir, police said Tuesday. The encounter broke out between militants and security forces at Shahabad-Kharpora when the ultras hiding there opened fire on the search party, Awantipora SP Bashir Ahmad Khan said.
Security forces gunned down Sajad Afghani, chief commander of the frontline Jaish-e-Mohammad outfit along with his guard Bilal, near the Dal Lake on Thursday afternoon. A senior police officer confirmed that the duo, both foreigners, was killed during an encounter near Hazratbal.
They were allegedly planning suicide attacks in Karachi.
During preliminary interrogation, it was found that the terrorists were trained in Bahawalpur for six months to kidnap or take as hostage a leading political leader to create disturbances in the country and mount pressure for getting their 42 associates in various Indian jails freed.
Umer Khalid was a A++ category top ranking terrorist and carried a cash reward of nearly Rs 7 lakh.
The terrorists were nabbed in a joint search operation launched Friday night by the 52 Rashtriya Rifles and Special Operation Group, Baramulla.
Pakistan on Wednesday arrested Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Maulana Masood Azhar, his brother and "several individuals" belonging to his dreaded outfit, which is suspected to have engineered the Pathankot terror attack, and sealed its offices after India demanded action, linking it to the fate of Foreign Secretary-level talks.
China Thursday offered to play a 'constructive role' to ease tension between Pakistan and Iran following their missile strikes against each other over the last two days and asked the two countries to 'exercise restraint and calmness and avoid escalation'.
The terrorists have been identified as Raqib Ahmad Sheikh, a resident of Shiganpora in Kulgam, and Pakistani nationals Waleed and Numan, a police spokesman said.
On Monday, five Army personnel were killed and five injured when heavily armed terrorists hurled a grenade and opened indiscriminate fire on two army vehicles around 3.30 pm on the Machedi-Kindli-Malhar mountainous road near Badnota village, about 150 km from the district headquarters Kathua.
Two militants of Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad outfit were killed on Sunday in an encounter with security forces in Pulwama district of Kashmir, police said.
A Pakistani official, who spoke on conditions of anonymity, said that Sheik Mohammed Rehan, an alleged member of JeM -- a banned terror group having close relations with the Al-Qaeda -- drove with Shahzad from Karachi to Peshawar in July 2009, The Los Angeles Times reports.
The Quad also vowed to work towards a free, open and prosperous Indo-Pacific, a region that has seen increasing Chinese military muscle-flexing in the last few years.
The arrest lends weight to the Prime Minister's Diwali-eve comment that there were external links to terrorism on Indian soil.
The defence minister, however, said the matter is under the domain of the Union home ministry and it will take appropriate decisions.
Two Jaish-e-Mohammad militants were killed in a daylong fierce gunfight with security forces on the outskirts of summer capital Srinagar on Thursday, reports Mukhtar Ahmad.
Pakistan may want to undertake a 'false flag' operation in J&K to divert attention from the situation in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa but infiltrating one SSG battalion into J&K and having two SSG battalions waiting to follow suit means war, which Pakistan cannot afford in its current economic crisis, notes Lieutenant General Prakash Katoch (retd).
The Pakistan-trained militants, identified as Ateeq Ahmad alias Nanhe and Rais Ahmad, are brothers of one of the two militants killed in the capital on Saturday.
Most of the suspects behind the killing of a key aide of Jaish e Mohammed terror group chief Masood Azhar and his two associates have been arrested, the police chief of Pakistan's Punjab province said on Friday, days after the trio were shot dead at a mosque in Sialkot city.
Iranian missiles and drones on Tuesday night targeted two bases of the Balochi militant group Jaish al Adl in Pakistan's border town of Panjgur in Balochistan province.
