SRINAGAR, Dec 1: Indian troops have shot dead four suspected militants in the held-Kashmir, including a commander believed to have been involved in last year's bombings in New Delhi, officials said on Friday.

An army statement said Ali Baba, a deputy commander with Lashkar-i-Taiba group, was shot dead in northern Baramulla district late on Thursday during a gunbattle.

“Ali Baba alias Abu Hufeza was the mastermind of bomb blasts in New Delhi in October 2005,” the statement said, adding that he had been active in Kashmir for the past two years.

“Baba was killed in a swift and surgical operation on a tip-off provided by the locals,” the army statement said.

Three more militants were killed during a fierce gunbattle in southern Udhampur district late on Thursday, a police spokesman said.

“The army and police ringed their hideout and asked the hiding militants to surrender. They instead opened fire,” the spokesman said.

He said all three killed in the shoot-out belonged to Hizbul Mujahedin, which favours Indian-occupied Kashmir's merger with Pakistan.—AFP