An Army Major and three soldiers were killed in a gunfight with a large group of terrorists who were trying to infiltrate from Gurez in north Kashmir yesterday.

The infiltration bid was foiled and two terrorists were also shot dead, the army said in a statement.

According to sources, it was a group of six to eight terrorists that crossed the Line of Control or LoC at Gurez in north Kashmir's Bandipore district, 125 km from Srinagar.

They were intercepted by soldiers, leading to a fierce gunfight. The encounter was still going on and the army had called in reinforcements to go after the remaining terrorists, who fled in the nearby jungles.

The Pakistani forces have been targeting Indian positions at Gurez since Monday night, in a possible attempt to provide covering fire to the group of heavily armed infiltrators.

Earlier this month, the government of India statistics revealed that there have been 406 infiltration attempts across J&K in 2017 during which 59 militants and seven armed forces were killed. This year up to June, 133 infiltration attempts were made during which 14 militants have been killed.

The government also maintained that the Indian Army and Border Security Force have adopted a robust counter infiltration strategy which has an appropriate mix of technology and human resource to check infiltration effectively.

"Issues of infiltration and suspicious activity close to border are taken up regularly with Pakistan authorities at appropriate level through the established mechanism of hotlines, flag meetings as well as talks between the Director General of Military Operations of the two countries," the government said in a written reply in parliament last week.