Author: Rajat Pandit
Publication: The Times of India
Date: May 17, 2003
60 Pak militants killed in hush
- hush operations near LoC
In what may be the largest single
counter-insurgency operation in India in the past decade or so, security
forces have in the last three weeks killed an estimated 60 hard,-core militants
in the Surankote area close to the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir.
Senior officers confirmed the ongoing
oper-ation in the Hill Kaka area of Surankote, but were tight-lipped about
the details. The army "has achieved tremendous success in killing and capturing
quite a number of terrorists". It has also seized a "huge quantity" of
assault ri-fles, mortars, grenades, rocket-propelled grenades and under-barrel
grenade launchers, among other "war-like stores", an officer said.
The intensity of the month-long
operations can be gauged from the fact that the forces have reportedly
used the Indian Air Force's modified attack helicopters, like Mi-17s, armed
with machine guns and rocket pods.
For years, Pakistanis belonging
to the Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Al Badr militant outfits have
operated with im-punity in this forbidding region to the west of the Pir
Panjal Mountains accessed through Jammu and Nowshera. While the mountains
are not especially high, they are rugged and forested and slope towards
the Pakistani side of the LoC, providing relatively easy all-weather ingress
to the Indian side.
Army headquarters is keeping the
inci-dent under wraps for now. The army does not like to publicise the
use of assault helicop-ters in counter- insurgency operations be-cause
it may indicate an escalation in mili- tancy and might also lead to the
induction of anti-aircraft and anti- helicopter weapons into the Valley
from across the border.
The operation began either on April
21 or 22, with 13 Pakistani militants being killed in a hideout in the
Hill Kaka area. Since then, it has been further intensified to clear the
area of all militants. "These militants prefer to lie low in the upper
reaches in areas like Hill Kaka. They have their bases and communi-cation
centres, arms and ammunition dumps there. They come down only to spread
ter-ror," said an officer.
"Manual combing operations in such
thick-ly forested areas, with heavily armed mili-tants holed up in the
higher reaches, have led to many casualties among army troops climb-ing
up. Consequently attack helicopters have been used to soften their hideouts,
including fortified concrete defences," he added.
The terrorists residing in this
area provide a transit point for those moving to other en-campments in
the Pir Panjal heights and the Kashmir Valley The current operations that
are probably being conducted by elite Special Forces, are likely to be
the first phase of an offensive to cleanse these entrenched Jihadto from
their high mountain sanctuaries across the whole state.
