SRINAGAR: In a brief skirmish in Srinagar’s Rainawari sector early Wednesday, security authorities shot and killed two “militants.”

One of them, Rayees Ahmad Bhat, was a former journalist who joined the banned Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) in August of last year, according to the authorities.

killed Bhat, a resident of Shahaabad Veeri, Bijbehara in southern Anantnag district, was formerly running a news service called ‘Valley News Service (VNS),’ according to Inspector General of Police (Kashmir region), Vijay Kumar. “The identity card discovered on him identified him as the editor in chief of a news outlet, indicating that he was involved in media misuse. He was a terrorist of the ‘C’ category, with two FIRs filed against him in Anantnag police stations for terror offences “He was reported as saying by local media.

According to a tweet from the Kashmir Zone Police, “One of the local #terrorists murdered by the proscribed #terror group LET was carrying a media identity card (ID). It clearly demonstrates an example of media abuse “..

Hilal Ahmad Rah, a Bijbehara native, was the other dead ‘C’ category militant, according to the authorities. He, too, went AWOL in August of last year to join the LeT, according to the report.

At around 1.30 a.m., the police tweeted that an encounter had broken out in Rainawari, and that J&K police and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) were on the scene.