SRINAGAR: The security forces were embroiled in yet another gunfight with separatist militants in Jammu and Kashmir’s northern Bandipore district on Tuesday, when massive counterinsurgency operations have been going on in three different areas of the Union Territory (UT) for the last three days.
“The Indian Army and J&K police launched a joint operation in the Nagmarg area of Bandipore based on specific intelligence input regarding the presence of terrorists. On being challenged, the terrorists opened indiscriminate fire,” a spokesman of the Army’s Srinagar-based 15 Corps — also called the Chinar Corps — said.
He added, “Own troops effectively retaliated. The operation is in progress.” It is the fifth gunfight that has taken place in the Baramulla-Bandipore-Kupwara belt of the Kashmir Valley in the past week.
Meanwhile, a 45-year-old woman Abida Zubair — among a dozen civilians injured in a grenade blast in a busy flea market in Srinagar on November 3 and a resident of Bandipore — died in a hospital here early on Tuesday.
Inspector General of Police (Kashmir range) V.K. Birdi had told a press conference here at the weekend that three persons associated with proscribed Lashkar-e-Tayyaba (LeT) “who carried out the attack at the behest of handlers based in Pakistan” have been arrested from Srinagar’s Ikhrajpora. Their target was a ‘mobile bunker’ of the CRPF, but the hand grenade tossed towards it fell and exploded on the road, leaving shoppers and vendors injured.
J&K has witnessed a surge in terror attacks, gunfights between the security forces and militants and other incidents of violence in the past over three weeks, leaving 26 people including nine militants, four Army jawans, two civilian porters working with the Army, two Village Defence Guards (VDGs) and nine other civilians dead and 21 people injured.
The latest spate of violence began soon after National Conference (NC) leader Omar Abdullah took over as Chief Minister of J&K following his party together with Congress swept the recently held Assembly elections in the UT.
The Chief Minister has publicly expressed concern over the surge in the terror incidents. While speaking in the J&K Assembly last week, he said that (J&K being a UT) the law and order and security matters are out of the domain of his government, but he is committed to peace in J&K. “Peace is essential for everything, and we seek peace through cooperation, not suppression,” he asserted and assured the police and other security forces of the government's support in restoring lasting peace across the UT.
As massive search operations launched by the Army and J&K police’s counterinsurgency Special Operations Group (SOG) in the woods of eastern Kishtwar district continued on the fourth consecutive day on Tuesday, the General-Commanding-Officer (GOC) of the Army’s 16 Corps — also known as White Knight Corps — Lieutenant General Naveen Sachdeva again visited the region on Tuesday for an on-the-spot assessment of the ground situation. He was accompanied by the GOC of the Army’s counterinsurgency Delta Force and senior officers of the J&K police and intelligence agencies.
In a post on ‘X’, the White Knight Corps said that they visited the Kishtwar sector “to review the ongoing counter-terror operations” and that the GOC “emphasized the need for close synergy among all stakeholders to eliminate remaining threats and commended their unwavering commitment to maintaining peace and security in the region”.
The operations were mounted after the militants kidnapped and subsequently murdered two residents Nazir Ahmad and Kuldeep Kumar who were working as VDGs in Kishtwar’s Munzla Dhar (Adhwari) area where they had gone for grazing their cattle last week.
On November 10, a Junior Commissioned Officer (JCO) Naib Subedar Rakesh Kumar of the Army’s 2 Para (Special Forces) was killed and three other jawans were injured in a gunbattle with the militants in Kishtwar’s Bhart Ridge area. The Army had said that it was the same group of terrorists which had killed the VDGs.
Meanwhile, the Army’s Northern Commander Lt Gen. M.V. Sudhindra Kumar on Tuesday visited the headquarters of the White Knight Corps at Nagrota to review the operational preparedness of troops, a defence spokesman said.
In a post on ‘X’, Army’s Udhampur-based Northern Command said that its commander exhorted all ranks to maintain the highest standards of professionalism and alertness in anti-terrorist operations.