Two terrorists were killed in an encounter in Jammu and Kashmir's Poonch sector on July 30, 2025, shortly after security forces killed three terrorists involved in the April 22 Pahalgam attack, which had left 26 civilians dead.

The two individuals were spotted by the Army's White Knight Corps moving suspiciously near the fence line in the Poonch sector. Upon challenge by troops, gunfire was exchanged resulting in the terrorists being shot dead. Jammu and Kashmir’s Director General of Police confirmed that the two terrorists had infiltrated into India and were affiliated with the Lashkar-e-Taiba terror group.

This encounter took place just two days after the security forces killed three Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists near Srinagar in Operation Mahadev. These terrorists—Suleiman, Afghani, and Jibran—were confirmed to be the perpetrators of the Pahalgam terror attack.

The Union Home Minister Amit Shah told the Parliament that the government's confirmation involved multiple steps: identifying the terrorists from bodies sheltered by others arrested by the NIA, and forensic ballistic evidence.

Rifles seized from these terrorists—a mix of M9 and AK-47s—were tested at the Chandigarh Forensic Science Laboratory, and the bullet shells fired from these weapons matched perfectly with those found at the Pahalgam attack site.

The encounter and the forensic verification leave no doubt about the involvement of these terrorists in the cold-blooded killing of innocents at Pahalgam's Baisaran Valley. Security forces acted swiftly and decisively in both incidents, reflecting ongoing efforts to counter terrorism in the region.

The two terrorists killed in Poonch were part of continued militant infiltration attempts days after the killing of the terrorists responsible for the Pahalgam massacre, with forensic evidence conclusively tying the latter group to the terror attack on April 22, 2025.

Agencies