Jammu and Kashmir

The twin encounters took place at Pombay and Gopalpora in South Kashmir's Kulgam district on Wednesday. Two anti-terrorist operations were carried out after acting on specific inputs generated by the Kulgam police about the presence of terrorists in the two villages of the district a in which five terrorists were eliminated. Aafaq Sikander, the commander of TRF, a famous terror outfit was also included in the 5 terrorists who were killed by the security forces.

These terrorists were hired by the terror organisations active in J&K, they added. The officials in the force said that a total of 48 battalions of the CRPF have been deployed in Jammu and Kashmir so far. Out of that, 22 battalions have been deployed exclusively for Srinagar while 22 for the rest of Kashmir.

The mercury level also dropped in the other parts of the valley as Pahalgam had the minimum temperature of minus 4.7 while Gulmarg recorded minus 2.0, the report revealed. Leh town of Ladakh recorded minus 10.7 and Kargil had minus 8.1, it added.

Lt General, D.P. Pandey, GOC of Srinagar headquartered 15 corps said, "Won't allow white collar terrorism to prevail in Jammu and Kashmir. "People who act behind (earning money, status, great jobs for their own families and Children) to recruit and fund terrorism in Kashmir should be questioned by our people".

The intelligence agencies have issued an alert according to which the terrorists are exploring new passages to sneak into Jammu and Kashmir given that the security forces have choked the known routes of infiltration from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) to the valley, news agency IANS reported quoting its sources.

The four killed also included a local militant, an overground worker (OGW), and the house owner Altaf Ahmed, the IGP said. IGP Vijay said that the house owner was killed in a crossfire and the OGW had provided his rented space to the terrorists.

The terrorist associate was the owner of the house in which the terrorists were hiding, the J&K police said. They hid on the top floor of the house, the police said. "The house owner who was injured in terrorist fire, succumbed to his injuries...Search is still going on," the J&K Police tweeted quoting IGP Kashmir Vijay Kumar.

Mehbooba Mufti said- "Sanatan Dharma doesn't teach us communalism, it is about RSS, BJP and Jan Sangh who want to make people fight in the name of communalism. They have hijacked Hinduism and Hindutva. They feel Hindutva and Hinduism are the BJP and RSS, but it is not so,"

Ladakh's Drass town remained frozen as the temperature dipped to minus 12.7 degrees, the Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Saturday. The minimum temperature in Srinagar was 0.7 degrees on Friday and it dropped down to 0.1 degree on Saturday, the IMD official said.

The sources said on Friday that out of 38 ultras, 27 belong to Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and 11 are from Jaish-e Mohammad (JeM) and they are on the radar of the security forces. They also said that the locations of these ultras have been traced, which have been spread in Srinagar, Pulwama, Baramulla and Kulgam and other parts of the valley while some of them might be hiding in the forest areas too.