Two terrorists belonging to The Resistance Front (TRF), a shadow outfit of Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) were killed in an encounter in Shopian district of Jammu and Kashmir on Wednesday.
According to officials, three security personnel were also injured in the encounter which is still on.
One of the terrorists has been identified as Adil Wani, the District Commander Shopian of TRF, who had been active since July 2020.
IGP, Kashmir zone, Vijay Kumar, said Wani was involved in the killing of the carpenter Sageer Ansari last Saturday.
He added that 15 terrorists have been killed in the area in two weeks.
Ansari, a resident of Saharanpur, UP was gunned down on Saturday in a south Kashmir village where he had been working as a carpenter for the last couple of years.
Ansari was among the several civilians killed in and around Srinagar by TRF, which had vowed to step up such attacks.
In the past couple of weeks, TRF terrorists had targeted mostly non-Kashmiris and non-Muslim Kashmiris.
Two more migrant workers from Bihar, Raja Reshi Dev and Joginder Rishi Dev were killed by terrorists in Kulgam on October 17, a day after Ansari was shot dead.
The targetted attacks on migrant workers had triggered panic among workers from other states, especially those working in the volatile south Kashmir region.?
An estimated three to four lakh migrant labourers from different parts of the country come to the Valley every year in early March for skilled and unskilled jobs such as masonry, carpentry and farming, and go back home before the onset of winter in November.?
The non-locals, engaged in apple orchards, and cardboard and bat factories, used to spend around six months in the Valley before returning home.
The wave of attacks had resulted in many of them fleeing the valley, despite the authorities promising them security.
On Monday night, about 50 migrant labourers, many of them from Bihar, arrived at the Nowgam railway station from nearby Budgam district where they worked in brick kilns.
"We spent the night in the open but we felt more secure due to the presence of security forces guarding the railway station," Mithilesh Kumar told PTI at the station on Tuesday.
"We are leaving Kashmir earlier than usual... There is too much fear, " he added.
"Nobody told us to leave but who will be responsible if someone among us gets killed. One moment we are told security will be provided and the next we are on our own," said Deepak Kumar, a resident of Bihar's Madhubani district.
For more on news and current affairs from around the world please visit?Indiatimes News.