Eight members of the Army, one of them a Major, and 17 terrorists are reported to have been killed in a series of encounters between patrols of theArmy and five different groups of terrorist infiltrators from the Pakistani territory in densely-forested areas of the Kupwara district of Jammu & Kashmir. The encounters, which started on March20, 2009, lasted five days.
The Army has stated that the encounters were the result of proactive action taken by it on receipt of human intelligence about the infiltration of the terrorists. The Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), which has claimed responsibility for the encounters, has tried to project them as in response to a surprise action launched by it which, according to it, started with an ambush of an army patrol. Media reports from the area have described the encounters as one of the fiercest gun battles in that area in recent years. The infiltration of the LET terrorists into the Kupwara area and their encounters with the army patrols have come in the wake of a significant improvement in the ground situation in J&K last year, which made possible the peaceful holding of the elections to the local Legislative Assembly. The elections saw a record voter turn-out.
Addressing a media conference on December 25, 2008, Kuldeep Khoda, the Director-General of Police of J&K, had said:(The Hindu of December 26, 2008):