An army Jawan has been killed and three others injured in an encounter between security forces and militants in Sopore town of north Kashmir. This is the 15th encounter in Sopore since January 1, 2010.

The gun-battle broke around 7 in the morning when a search party entered a house in Chinkipora village in Sopore about 55 kms from Srinagar . According to police party was fired upon killing one soldier and injuring three other jawans.

The jawans were seriously injured when militants opened indiscriminate fire on the joint search party of army and police.

"We cordoned the house after specific inputs about presence of militants. The moment we reached there we were fired upon and grenades were hurled in which we lost one jawan and two others recieved were injured,'' said Altaf Khan, superintendent of police in the area.

According to him evacuvation of the civilians was on. "We have not been able to evacuvate all the civilians as it is a heavily buildup area and the militants are firing indiscriminately,'' he added.

Two militants including one of the top militant commander Abdullah Unni is believed to be holed up in the house. Unni reportedly gave police a slip in another village Warpora in the same area. Even after two days of massive combing operations the police was unable to trap the militants. Unni is also said to be the chief of suicide missions in the valley and surfaced in the area about one year ago.

The exchange of fire between the two sides was going on when reports last came in.