Author: Sanjeev Miglani
Publication: Wired News
Date: May 23, 2003
URL: http://wireservice.wired.com/wired/story.asp?section=World&storyId=730461
India said Friday it had destroyed
a large mountain base of Muslim guerrillas inside Kashmir but noted there
was no sign yet that Pakistan had stopped supporting the rebels.
More than 60 guerrillas, most of
them from Pakistan-based groups fighting Indian rule in Kashmir, have been
killed so far in one of the biggest air and ground operations launched
by the Indian army in recent years, a senior officer said.
A cache of weapons, including anti-
personnel mines, and medical supplies, rations and satellite and mobile
phones were found in a network of bunkers and a command headquarters hidden
deep in the mountains.
"This was a classic guerrilla mountain
base, secure and remote," said Major General Hardev Lidder who commanded
an operation that began last month.
"We think there could have been
between 300 to 350 terrorists" he told reporters flown into the remote
region where the seized weapons, diaries and video footage of the camps
were shown.
Some of the bunkers were in snow-covered
terrain around 13,120 feet above sea level, the army said.
"They had lived through the winter,
it's only some footprints on the snow that gave them away," said another
officer who took part in the operation.
Indian officials said the mountain
base, which was used by the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad
groups and stocked by supplies from Pakistan, was proof that Islamabad
continued to fuel the revolt.
Pakistan denies direct involvement
in the revolt in Kashmir, India's only Muslim majority state, but says
it gives moral support to the Kashmiri people in what it calls their struggle
for self-determination.
The renewed offensive against the
guerrillas comes at a time when India and Pakistan have ordered restoration
of diplomatic ties and air links after a 10-month military standoff over
Kashmir.
But face-to-face talks between the
nuclear-armed rivals who have twice gone to war over Kashmir are not expected
in the near future because of New Delhi's insistence that Islamabad stop
rebel incursions and dismantle training camps which it says exist in Pakistan.
Pakistan has denied any infiltration
from its soil and sought international monitoring of the Line of Control
which separates the two armies in Kashmir. (Additional reporting by Sheikh
Mushtaq in Baramulla)
