Army jawan hit in head during stone-pelting dies
Two more soldiers died while fighting militants in Kashmir's Valley's Pulwama and Baramulla districts during the past two days.
Srinagar: An Army jawan hit in the head in a stone-pelting incident in Jammu and Kashmir’s southern Anantnag district on Thursday succumbed to his injuries in a hospital here on Friday, the Army said.
Two more soldiers died while fighting militants in Kashmir’s Valley’s Pulwama and Baramulla districts during the past two days, the officials here said adding that eight militants were also killed in three separate gunfights.
Defence spokesman Colonel Rajesh Kalia said here that one of the slain soldiers was Sepoy Rajendra Singh who was part of the ‘Quick Reaction Team’ of the Army providing security cover to a Border Roads Organisation (BRO) convoy while passing through the Anantnag bypass tri-junction near the National Highway-44 on Thursday. At around 6 pm, a group of youth hurled stones at the vehicle Sepoy Singh was in and one of the stones hit him in the head, the spokesman said.
“He was provided immediate first aid and subsequently evacuated to 92-Base Hospital in Srinagar but, unfortunately, he succumbed to the injury,” the spokesman said. 22-year-old Singh was a resident of village Badena in Pithoragarh district of Uttrakhand, had joined Army in 2016 and is survived by his parents.
Lance Naik Brajesh Kumar, 32, sustained splinter injuries during a counterinsurgency operation in Pazalpora, Malgunipura village on the outskirts of north-western Sopore town on Friday and died soon thereafter. Two militants were also killed in the clash.
The police said that the fighting at Pazalpora erupted after the J&K police’s counterinsurgency Special Operations Group together with the Army’s 22 Rashtriya Rifles and the CRPF’s 92 Battalion launched a cordon-and-search operation to take on militants hiding in a private house.