At last two police officers and four Taliban militants were killed in an overnight shootout in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), officials said on Thursday.

The clash followed after the security forces, on a tip-off about the presence of militants, launched an operation in the Hussain Kot forest area in the Rawalakot district of the region.

The Senior Superintendent Police (SSP) Rawalakot, Riaz Mughal, told the media that the police launched a raid after a tip-off regarding the presence of terrorists in the area.

He said that the terrorists were hiding in a cave and were surrounded, but when the police attempted to apprehend them, one of the terrorists hurled a grenade at the officers, prompting retaliatory fire.

“In the exchange, all four terrorists were neutralised,” he said, adding that three were identified as Zarnosh Naseem, his brother Gibran Naseem and Ulfat, while the fourth was unidentified yet.

Mughal confirmed that two police officers, Gulzar and Tariq Bashir, were killed in the clash.

He said three Kalashnikov rifles, hand grenades, four suicide vests, and several rounds of ammunition were recovered from the site.

The regional police chief, Abdul Jabbar, said that the killed militants belonged to the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a group of rebels linking their origin to Pakistan and lambasted by authorities as “Khawarji” - an old expression borrowed from the Islamic history and used for a group of extremists who were declared as apostates. It was a rare incident when police killed the TTP militants in PoK.

The TTP, also known as the Pakistan Taliban, was set up as an umbrella group of several militant outfits in 2007. The group has a strong presence in the tribal region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, bordering Afghanistan.

Jabbar claimed that the police foiled an effort by the outlawed outfit to set up a base in the region for attacks.

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