Security personnel at the site of an encounter with terrorists, at Raj Bagh Police station in Jammu on Friday. (Press Trust of India)
Early on Friday morning, two terrorists dressed in Indian Army uniform crossed the international border, hijacked a jeep and stormed a police station in Kathua district of Jammu, killing four people, in the first major terror attack in the state since Mufti Mohammad Sayeed's PDP-BJP coalition government took charge this month.
Both the terrorists were also killed in a fierce gun battle that lasted for six hours.
The terrorists stormed the Rajbhag police station, 15 km from the border, at around 6.15 am, opening fire as they entered. A policeman and two personnel of the Central Reserve Police Force or CRPF were immediately killed.
They are believed to have crossed the border 30 minutes earlier and captured the jeep, whose civilian driver they reportedly shot dead.
There were 25 policemen and CRPF personnel at the police station when it was attacked. Some of them took positions on the roof of the building while others were evacuated as a joint operation was launched by the Army, the CRPF and the police.
The terrorists holed up in a room at the police station, from where they fired at the forces. The encounter ended at noon.
Traffic on the Jammu-Pathankote National Highway was closed while the gun battle was on. Home Minister Rajnath Singh spoke to the Jammu and Kashmir Director General of Police and asked the Union Home Secretary to monitor the situation.
Sources said the terrorists would have used unfenced sections of the International Border to cross over. Although the entire India- Pakistan border is fenced, there are portions both on the International Border (IB) and the Line of Control (LoC) where rivers and rivulets make the fencing vulnerable.