Two cops, two militants killed in Punjab border shootout

GURDASPUR - Two policemen and two militants were killed in a fierce gun battle early Sunday near the India-Pakistan international border in Punjab’s Gurdaspur district, police said.

Punjab police officials said that both militants were gunned down after a police team patrolling the border belt in the Bhamial sector spotted them in the early hours of the morning.

“Two Punjab police personnel were killed and one injured in the gun battle,” a police official told IANS here.

The identity of the killed militants is being established, officials said.

The shootout took place near Norat Jaimal Singh area of Gurdaspur. The area is close to Punjab’s border with Jammu and Kashmir.

Police and security agencies have launched a search operation in the area to see if any more militants are hiding there, officials said.

The Bhamial sector is the same area where rockets were fired from the Pakistan side and over 10 metres of the barbed wire fencing inside Indian territory was blown up near the international border April 19.

The Border Security Force (BSF), which mans the 553-km long barbed wire fenced border between India and Pakistan in Punjab, retaliated with light and medium weapons. Between 800-900 rounds of ammunition were fired then.

Incidents of rockets being fired from the Pakistan side and gun fire are increasing in the Amritsar and Gurdaspur districts of Punjab in recent months. Such incidents took place in July and September last year (Attari border belt in Amritsar district) and again in January (Attari border) and in Gurdaspur’s Bhamial sector this year.