- Militants detonate powerful IED with remote control
- Ultras’ presence detected after Satellite phone found functional
- Well knit network of OGWs assisting in terror attacks
- Massive searches on, no direct contact established so far
Sanjeev Pargal
JAMMU, May 5: Five elite para commandos of Army’s Special Forces were martyred and a Major was injured when militants triggered an IED blast with remote control at dense Kesari Hills forests in Kandi area of Rajouri district this morning while security personnel continued massive searches to track down the militants but a contact hasn’t been established with them so far.
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The killings of five Special Forces personnel, who were tasked for specific operation against the militants on a very credible input of their presence in Kesari Hills near village Panali opposite Mandir Gala Gali, came within fortnight of Bhatta Durrian ambush in Mendhar tehsil of neighbouring Poonch district in which an equal number of bravehearts sacrificed their lives and another one was injured.
Bhatta Durrian terror attack was executed by the militants on the day the visit of Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Billawal Bhutto was announced to India for attending SCO meeting of the Foreign Ministers at Goa while today’s incident came when Bhutto attended the SCO meeting.
“It wasn’t a search operation. The Special Forces don’t carry out searches. They go for a kill. It was very very specific input about presence of the militants but unfortunately, they were trapped in the IED blast, ” officials told the Excelsior.
They said eight to 10 para commandos went for killing of two to three militants in Kesari forests after pin pointed information as a Satellite telephone was found working there. However, the militants had planted a powerful Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) enroute.
The para commandos are generally headquartered at Northern Command in Udhampur from where they are airlifted for specific operations. However, for past some time, some of them have also been stationed at Sunderbani and Rajouri for emergency operations.
The militants detonated IED with remote control as the Special Forces personnel came close to it triggering huge explosion in which two Army soldiers were martyred and four others including a Major were injured.
The militants managed to escape.
Soon after the explosion, additional troops of Army and police rushed to the spot and cordoned off the area. Injured were airlifted to Command Hospital in Udhampur where three more soldiers succumbed to the injuries taking toll to five.
Condition of injured Major is also stated to be serious but he is responding to the treatment in the Command Hospital Udhampur.
Officials are investigating possibility of the militants intentionally switching on their Satellite telephone to let their locations known and then laying powerful IED to trap the Army personnel when they came for operation. The militants appeared to have detonated the IED from a hill and then escaped, they said.
However, Army and police personnel have launched massive searches in Kesari forests to track down the militants whose number is stated to be between two to three and they are believed to be Pakistanis.
Authorities immediately suspended mobile internet services in Rajouri to ensure that militants don’t manage to use it to get location on their phones to escape. Internet was, however, restored after about four hours of suspension.
The bravehearts who sacrificed their lives in the blast have been identified as Havaldar Neelam Singh son of Gurdev Singh R/o Jourian, Akhnoor in Jammu district, Naik Arvind Kumar son of Ujwaal Singh, a resident of Suri Chatialai in Marhoon area of Palampur (Himachal Pradesh), Paratrooper Pramod Negi son of Devinder Singh Negi of Shillai, Sirmaur in Himachal Pradesh, Lance Naik Ruchin Singh Rawat son of Rajendra Singh, a resident of Kunigad, Gairsain in Uttarakhand and Paratrooper Siddhant Chettri son of Kharka Bahadur R/o Pulbazar in Darjeeling district of West Bengal.
Officials couldn’t say at this stage whether Dhangri, Bhatta Durrian terror strikes and today’s incident in Kandi were executed by a same or different groups of the militants. However, as per the sources, there could be different groups of militants operating in twin border districts of Rajouri and Poonch.
Meanwhile, DGP Dilbag Singh and Additional DGP Jammu Zone Mukesh Singh rushed to Kandi for on spot assessment of the situation. DIG Rajouri-Poonch range Haseeb Mughal and SSP Rajouri Amritpal Singh are also camping at the spot.
Interacting with reporters, Dilbag Singh said that the soldiers who attained martyrdom battled hard with terrorists.
He further maintained that terrain is very difficult and operation to clear the area from the threat of terror has been underway.
The DGP further said that further operational proceedings are going on nothing else can be stated as of now.
Additional troops of Army, paramilitary force and police have been rushed to the site and surrounding areas to neutralize the militants.
Searches in the forest areas continued till this evening but, as per the officials, a direct contact with the militants hasn’t been established so far and there were reports that they might have escaped to another jungle. The militants, the officials said, are being assisted by well-knit network of Over Ground Workers (OGWs) for food, shelter and movement from one place to another.
This is third major terror attack in twin border districts of Rajouri and Poonch this year and all of them remained unsolved with no militant involved in them having been killed so far though some OGWs have been arrested by police in Bhatta Durrian strike.
Security forces have been engaged in a massive combing operation for the past 15 days in the twin border districts of Rajouri and Poonch.
More than 250 people were detained for questioning during combing operations. Six OGWs who extended full support to the militants in Bhatta Durrian attack were arrested.
The militants have adopted a twin strategy of engaging troops or attacking people and then laying Improvised Explosive Devices to trigger blast to target security forces.
This also happened in Dhangri village in Rajouri where the militants killed seven civilians in twin attacks on January 1 this year.
In the last one-and-a-half years, Poonch and Rajouri districts in Jammu and Kashmir have witnessed more killings of Army personnel than the militancy-hit Kashmir valley, the officials said.
26 soldiers, 9 civilians killed in
terror strikes in R-P in 2½ yrs
Twenty six Army soldiers and nine civilians have been killed in the militancy related incidents in Rajouri and Poonch during last about two and a half years which indicates that good number of militants could be present in the two border districts.
Here is the chronology of militancy related incidents in two districts since October 2021.
*May 5, 2023: Five Army para commandos martyred and Major injured in an IED blast triggered by the militants at Kandi, Rajouri.
*April 20, 2023: Five Army bravehearts sacrificed their lives and another was injured in an ambush laid by the militants at Bhatta Durrian in Mendhar tehsil of Poonch district.
* August 11, 2022: Five Army jawans were killed and two fidayeens were eliminated during attack on an Army camp at Pargal in Darhal area of Rajouri district.
*October 11, 2021: Five Army soldiers including a Junior Commissioned Officer (JCO) lost their lives in an encounter with militants at Chamrer forests in Surankote tehsil of Poonch district. Militants escaped.
* October 16, 2021: Four more soldiers including another JCO lost their lives in gun battle with same group of militants at Bhatta Durrian in Mendhar tehsil of Poonch. Army searched militants in Pir Panjal forests for about a fortnight but they remained untraced.
*October 30, 2021: Two Army jawans including a Lieutenant became victims to a mine blast in Nowshera sector of Rajouri district.
* January 1, 2023: Seven civilians of minority community, two of them minors, were killed in firing and IED blast triggered by two foreign militants at village Dhangri in Rajouri district.
December 18, 2022: Two civilians were killed in a militant attack outside Alpha Gate in Rajouri.
* Mar-Apr 2022: Four blasts rocked Koteranka tehsil in Rajouri district within a span of 28 days targeting police, labourers, marriage house etc but causing very little damage. However, all these blasts were later worked out by the police.
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