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Three soldiers, including a major, and an equal number of militants were killed as a fierce gun battle raged in Jammu and Kashmir’s Nagrota cantonment on Tuesday, the second such attack on an army facility in as many months.
In another gunfight, 70km from Nagrota, three infiltrators were killed and six BSF men, including a DGP, were injured near the International Border in Chamliyal area of Samba sector.
While a combing operation was being conducted in Chamliyal, Nagrota gun battle was on when reports last came in.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was briefed on the Nagrota strike that didn’t target civilians, defence minister Manohar Parrikar said.
There was no official confirmation of the soldiers’ deaths, but sources said the militants, suspected to be three to four in number, stormed an army unit at around 5am.
“Intense firing is on at 166 medium regiment at Nagrota near Jammu- Srinagar highway,” an intelligence source said, adding three army men were dead and two injured.
The injured were shifted to a military hospital in Satwari, sources said.
Read| Soldier killed in Pak firing in Machhil sector, toll rises to 3 in 24 hours
Earlier, more than a dozen loud explosions followed by indiscriminate firing were heard from an area housing an officers’ mess.
Local administration has ordered shut all schools in the cantonment which is vast and runs close to the National Highway 1A.
Kartar Singh, 55, who has a small grocery shop next to the encounter site, said, he heard gun shots early in the morning.
“Since there is a firing range, I took it as a routine practice but then I heard big explosions, indiscriminate firing followed by distress whistling inside the army unit,” Singh said.
He herded his wife, four sons and a daughter in a room when he realised it was a militant strike. “We remained there till more reinforcements arrived. It was really very scary in the initial hours,” he said.
The Nagrota cantonment is the headquarters of 16 Corps and houses several important army units.
The 16 Corps is responsible for guarding the line of control on the southern side of the Pir Panjal range.
Nineteen soldiers were killed when a group of suspected Pakistani militants attacked an army camp in Uri in northern Kashmir on September 18. Eleven days later, Indian troops hit militants in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir as they were preparing to infiltrate into India.
Three infiltrators killed in Samba
Three infiltrators were killed and six Border Security Force men injured, one of them critically, near the international border in Chamliyal area of Ramgarh in Samba district on Tuesday morning.
The gunfight broke out early in the morning after the three militants fled to a culvert between the fence and the zero line in Phatwal near Chamliyal shrine.
Security forces had cordoned off the area on Monday night as the men were holed up in a nearby power house, police said. An assault was launched on Tuesday morning after they escaped to the culvert.
The shrine of Baba Dalip Singh Manhas, popularly known as Baba Chamliyal, is revered by people on both sides of the border.
An annual fair is held in June to celebrate the memory of the saint who lived in the village around 320 years ago. Pakistani Rangers often offer chadar at the shrine.
Following the September 29 surgical strike, there has been a surge in militant activities and border firing that has left a 13-year-old ceasefire agreement in tatters.
Several soldiers and civilians have been killed, with the two sides targeting army posts and villages along the border as well as the line of control, the de facto border.
