Hizb commander gunned down

Army too loses an officer in the operation

ANANTNAG: Security forces on Tuesday dealt a severe blow to Hizb-ul-Mujhadeen outfit when they killed its chief operations commander/divisional commander for south Kashmir Suhail Faisal, in a fierce gun battle at Bijbehera town. A major of the Special Forces was also killed while his bodyguard was injured in the encounter.

Mohammad Ashraf Shah alias Suhail Faisal was one of the longest surviving and most wanted militants in Jammu and Kashmir. He was involved in several IED and car bomb blasts on the Srinagar-Jammu highway and Srinagar. A techno-savvy commander, he had mastered an art to trigger explosions using mobile phones.

Brigadier AK Singh, officiating general officer commander (GoC) of Victor Force, a counter-insurgency division of army in south Kashmir, said based on specific inputs from intelligence agencies, an operation was launched on a particular house where the militant commander was hiding. Initially, he said, the inmates denied that any militant was in the house. However, when the house was searched, the militant fired on the party. Immediately, the troops removed the inmates from the house to prevent any collateral damage.

“Later, troops led by Major MH Patambari of 3-Para (Special Forces) then stormed the hideout but they came under heavy fire causing the Major’s death. His buddy Naib Rakesh tried to remove his body but he received gun shot wounds. In the ensuing encounter the troops killed Suhail Faisal,” said Brig Singh.

A resident of Jablipora Anantnag, Suhail was a militant since 1990. He was sent to Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK) by Hizb-ul-Mujhadeen where he spent 10 years.

A close confidant of PoK based Hizb supremo Syed Salah-ud-din, he was sent to back in 2002 and became the district commander of Poonch in Jammu. In December 2004, he was sent to Anantnag to replace Shabir Budari, the then divisional commander who was killed by the security forces.

“It is the major blow to Hizb-ul-Mujhadeen. The slain commander was the backbone of the outfit in south Kashmir and carried the Rs2.5 lakh bounty on his head. He was the longest serving militant in Kashmir and had been very meticulous in his deals. He was changing three hide-outs in a day to hoodwink the security forces,” said Hemant Kumar Lohia, deputy inspector general of police, south Kashmir range.

After passing his class 11 examination, Suhail Faisal joined Industrial Training Institute (ITI) and completed diploma in the engineering streams.

“He had a technical know how. This was the reason that he could use mobile phones as electronic devices to trigger explosions. He was a master in triggering car bomb explosions and IED blasts. Above all he was coordinating between various militant outfits for creating subversion,” said Lohia.