Srinagar:
Union Home Ministry on Wednesday sought a report from security agencies about the reports that Taliban groups may have entered into the Kashmir Valley though Army denied reports to this effect.
The move comes after a wireless intercept reportedly suggested that a group of nearly 20 militants, said to be Taliban, were fighting the Army in Gurez sector of North Kashmir.
The Army headquarters informed the government that intermittent gunfight was on in the sector and two of the group had been gunned down, sources in the Home Ministry said.
The sources said the bodies retrieved from the scene of encounter showed some features similar to those belonging to North West Frontier Province (NWFP).
The security agencies were closely monitoring the situation after an intercept between two groups suggested presence of Taliban in North Kashmir and panic messages from Lashker-e-Toiba cadres asking them to go back.
In Srinagar, the Army maintained that there were no reports about the presence of Taliban militants in the Kashmir valley. "So far, there was no information that any Taliban militant had infiltrated into this side from Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir," the Srinagar-based Defence Spokesman said.
The spokesman asserted that troops deployed on the Line of Control are strong enough to deal with any situation and said there were few encounters in the forest area near the LoC recently in which about two dozen militants were killed.