The army on Thursday lost one more soldier in the gunfight in Rajouri, taking the toll of officers and soldiers in the encounter to five, the third time the force had lost as many soldiers in a single gunfight in the Pir Panchal region of Jammu and Kashmir this year.

The army said it killed two militants, including Pakistani militant commander Quari, the alleged mastermind of three major attacks in the region this year.

The firing stopped on Thursday.

The high army toll prompted former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti to question the Centre’s claims of normality as she wondered why jawans were getting killed if normalcy had returned to the region.

The dead include the captain and at least one soldier of the elite 9 Para, which has borne the brunt of renewed militancy in Pir Panchal, comprising the border districts of Poonch and Rajouri.

Army sources said the soldier who died on Thursday was injured in Wednesday’s indiscriminate firing by the militants.

Two army captains and two soldiers had died on Wednesday and an unspecified number of jawans were injured.

The army on Thursday released the names of five slain officers and jawans and paid tributes to them.

The two dead captains — M.V. Pranjal from Mangalore and Shubham Gupta from Agra — were in their 20s.

Three others are Havaldar Abdul Majid from Poonch in Jammu, Lance Naik Sanjay Bisht from Nainital in Uttarakhand and paratrooper Sachin Laur from Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh.

An army officer said Quari, who was killed in the gunfight, was a “highly ranked terrorist leader” of the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). He was trained on the Pakistan and Afghanistan front and was active in Rajouri and Poonch for the past one year.

“He is also believed to be the mastermind of the Dangri and Kandi attacks. He was sent to revive terrorism in the region. He is an expert in IEDs, operating from and hiding in caves, and a trained sniper,” the army officer said.

Seven members of the minority Hindu community were killed and several others were injured in Dangri on New Year's Eve.

Five soldiers including four elite special forces commandos from 9 Para were killed in the Kandi gunfight in Rajouri on May 5.

Five soldiers were killed on April 20 in a daring ambush on the army in Poonch district.

Kashmir was also rocked by high-profile killings, including those in the Kokernag gunfight in which a colonel, a major, a deputy superintendent of police and a soldier were killed in September.

Former chief minister Mehbooba on Thursday asked if the BJP was making repeated claims that the situation was perfectly fine in Jammu and Kashmir, then why jawans were losing their lives.

“(On one hand they claim), militancy has ended but on the other hand, you find jawans being martyred…. I can’t understand if the situation has improved, why are our jawans getting martyred?” she said.

Mehbooba said the lives of ordinary Kashmiris had been turned into hell in the name of combating militancy as they continued to face arrests and surveillance. “Nobody can talk (against these excesses),” she said.

Jammu police chief Anand Jain said they had recovered the bodies of both militants and seized arms and ammunition.

“The area is being thoroughly searched to check for any other suspicious article, support structure, etc,” he said.

In an unusual statement, the shadowy militant group Peoples’ Anti-Fascist Front, which has claimed responsibility for the attack, paid tributes to Captain Shubham.

“You entered the death trap knowing well that the odds were pitted against you. We may accuse you of many things but we will never accuse you of cowardice — for there was not a grain of it in you. This is how we will honour you even though you were an enemy,” a purported statement of the group that surfaced on social media said.

The group took a jibe at the country’s leadership for not eulogising him, apparently referring to the absence of condolences by top leaders.