SRINAGAR, Feb 2: Indian troops claimed killing 12 Kashmiri Mujahideen in separate encounters on Saturday and Friday night.

The dead included seven members of the Lashkar-i-Taiba, police said.

Three of the Lashkar men were killed on Friday evening when troops “encircled a house where militants (Mujahideen) were hiding”, a police spokesman claimed.

Police alleged the slain fighters were Pakistanis, and one of them, Abu Hyder, was serving the group as “company commander”. In another encounter, Indian forces shot dead four more Lashkar fighters at Upper Sanar, near Surankote, 530 kilometres south of Srinagar, the police said.

A freedom fighter and an Indian soldier were killed in a three-hour long encounter on Friday night in Kupwara district, police said.

Three other Indian soldiers sustained injuries during the gunbattle. Four more Mujahideen were killed elsewhere in occupied Kashmir.

Police said freedom fighters shot dead three persons, including a woman in Rajouri and Udhampur on Saturday.—Reuters