On a tip off, the security forces raided a militant hideout in south Kashmir and seized five powerful and ingeniously designed car bombs fabricated in the fuel tanks along with one AK rifle and two AK magazines, Brigadier S K Raychoudhari, the Deputy General Officer Commanding Eighth Mountain Division, told reporters here.

The seizure was made after an intense fire fight between the hiding foreign mercenaries and a team of security forces but no loss of life was reported in the hour-long encounter initiated by the mercenaries, he said.

He said the car bombs were being designed to target key military, security forces and political personalities in the Valley.

One of the car bombs had the capacity ofcarrying up to 80 kgs of devastating plastic explosive while the four other car bombs contained shaped charges placed inside modified fuel tanks with plastic explosive, he said.

He said the shaped charges are capable of piercing armour planting. If put to use, these bombs could have created devastation and havoc, which may have retarded the phenomenal success achieved in combating the sponsored insurgency in the Valley.

Brig Roychoudhari said with this sensational breakthrough the security forces have put a "curtain" on a new dimension to the misconceived militancy in the Valley - a plot abetted, sponsored and hatched by Pakistan's ISI with the help of non-Kashmiri foreign mercenaries.

In reply to questions, he said the Intelligence for the operation had been collected over a period of three months where extensive intelligence inputs regarding the fabrication process of the car bombs, militant tasking, financial arrangements and modus operandi of the ISI, without ambiguity, was discerned.

He said thesecurity forces struck the foreign militants at the right time while bombs were being shifted to various places in the Valley.

However, he said no one was arrested in this connection and did not divulge the group to which the foreign militants were affiliated "for security reasons".