A suspected militant was killed in an overnight gunfight with security forces in Jammu and Kashmir’s Kulgam district, the Indian Army said on Saturday.

The gunfight began on Friday evening during a search operation conducted by a joint team of the Jammu and Kashmir Police, Army and paramilitary forces in Akhal village.

A security operation codenamed “Operation Akhal” was launched after receiving intelligence inputs about militant presence in the area, The Indian Express quoted unidentified police officials as saying.

“Intermittent and intense firefight continued through the night,” the Army’s Chinar Corps said in a social media post. “Alert troops responded with calibrated fire…One terrorist has been neutralised by the security forces so far.”

Senior police officer VK Birdi told NDTV that one or two more suspected militants may be hiding in the area.

The operation was still underway, the Army said.

This is the third major gunfight in the Union Territory in the past few days.

On Wednesday, the Army said that two suspected militants were killed in a gunfight with security forces while attempting to infiltrate across the Line of Control into Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch district.

On July 28, three militants were killed in Operation Mahadev, a security operation in the Lidwas meadows of Srinagar’s Dara area.

On July 29, Union Home Minister Amit Shah told Parliament that the three militants neutralised in Operation Mahadev were terrorists involved in the Pahalgam terror attack.

He had said the operation was jointly carried out by the Army, the Jammu and Kashmir Police and the Central Reserve Police Force.

The three men identified as Suleiman Shah, Afghan and Jibran, were members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba terror group.

The men were identified as having been involved in the Pahalgam attack by those who had provided them shelter, the Union minister had told Parliament.

The terror attack at Baisaran near Pahalgam town in Jammu and Kashmir on April 22 left 26 persons dead and 16 injured. The terrorists targeted tourists after asking their names to ascertain their religion, the police said. All but three of those killed were Hindu.