Soldier Killed in J&K’s Udhampur, 3-4 Suspected Jaish Terrorists Trapped in Gunfight
An Army soldier was killed in a fierce gunfight with terrorists in a remote forest area of Jammu and Kashmir’s Udhampur district late on Friday evening . Security forces have trapped a group of three to four terrorists, believed to be from the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) outfit, and the operation is ongoing .
The encounter began in the Dudu-Basantgarh heights on the Doda-Udhampur border after a joint team of the Army’s Special Operations Group (SOG) and local police launched a search operation based on specific intelligence inputs . When the forces zeroed in on the terrorists’ location, they came under heavy fire . The soldier was critically injured in the initial exchange and was evacuated to a hospital, where he later succumbed to his injuries, officials confirmed on Saturday morning .
The area has been cordoned off, and a massive search operation, bolstered by reinforcements with drones and sniffer dogs, has been launched to neutralize the trapped terrorists . The White Knight Corps of the Army confirmed the ongoing operation in a post on X, stating, “Contact with terrorists… Operation continues” .
This region has witnessed several gunbattles over the past year. In June, security forces eliminated Haider, a top JeM commander who had been active in the same Dudu-Basantgarh forest area for four years .
In a separate development, the J&K Police’s Counter-Intelligence unit conducted raids across seven districts in the Kashmir Valley, recovering a large cache of weapons, including 20 Chinese hand grenades, in the Poonch sector . Sources said the consignment was recently dumped and was intended to be moved to the hinterland for terror activities, but timely intelligence thwarted the plan .
