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Gogji Bagh siege comes to an end,
cops rescued, 2 militants killed

The 18-hour long encounter between militants holed up in a house and security forces in Gogji Bagh locality in Srinagar ended on Tuesday morning with the killing of two ultras and the safe evacuation of three police officials trapped inside the building.

Superintendent of Police (south Srinagar) Mukesh Kumar, who headed the operation, said the house owner had revealed that the militants had been holed up for the past two days with the aim of targetting a nearby building from where polling material was to be distributed for Tuesday's election.

Kumar clarified that the three police officials were trapped inside the house and not held hostage by the militants as presumed earlier.

At the beginning of the encounter on Monday evening, one policeman Jagdev Singh was killed when a police party barged into the house to flush out the militants.

When the firing began, three police officials took shelter in one of the rooms, but the ultras were not aware of this, he said.

"We engaged the militants in an exchange of fire from the rear, which allowed the three police officials to escape from the house into a mobile bunker waiting outside at around 0630 IST in the morning," he said.

Later, the BSF fired mortars and detonated Improvised Explosive Devices setting the house ablaze.

As flames engulfed the three-storeyed building, a militant, in a desperate bid to escape, jumped out of the building onto an adjacent garage and began firing indiscriminately. But he was shot down by the security forces.

Soon the fire spread to the garage, consuming the body of the militant.

Some time later, the other militant also jumped to the ground floor and fired intermittently. The security forces retaliated killing him. Two jawans were injured in the operation.

Fire brigade and security forces are searching the debris to ensure that there is no other militant alive.

According to police officials at the scene, the two militants belonged to the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayiba.

However, another pro-Pakistan militant outfit Jamiat-ul Mujahideen has claimed that its members were involved in the incident.

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