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SRINAGAR: Masked terrorists on Saturday shot dead a Kashmiri Army jawan outside his home at the Warpora area of Sopore in north Kashmir ’s Baramulla district. He had come home on leave from his unit.

SSP Sopore Javid Iqbal told TOI that Mohammad Rafi Yatoo, who had suffered heavy gunshot wounds, was immediately taken to a hospital in Srinagar , where doctors declared him brought dead.

Soon after the killing at 5.25pm, a team of personnel from the Army and police’s special operations group launched a cordon-and-search operation in the area to nab the assailants.

Saturday’s attack comes in the wake of several killings of men-in-uniform by terrorists in the Valley. In June last year, 44 Rashtriya Rifles personnel Aurangzeb was kidnapped and shot dead by terrorists while he was travelling in a private vehicle to his home in Poonch to celebrate Eid with his family. Aurangzeb’s bullet-riddled body was recovered later by a team of police and Army. He was shot repeatedly in the head and abdomen.

In July 2018, three terrorists had dragged 23-year old Kashmiri Army officer, Umar Fayaz Parray, four kilometres away from his uncle’s house in Shopian district and shot him dead. He had come to attend his cousin’s wedding. Umar had joined the Rajputana Rifles unit in Akhnoor as a commissioned officer, in the rank of a Lieutenant.

In September, Lance Naik Mukhtar Ahmad Malik, who had returned to his home in south Kashmir’s Kulgam district for the last rites of his son, was shot dead by terrorists. The gunmen had barged into Malik’s home and shot him from point blank. Malik was a commander of a disbanded counter-insurgency group before he was recruited in the Territorial Army.

