Pampore gunbattle concludes after 3 days, 2 terrorists killed

The operation took well over 50 hours as most parts of the concrete building had been reduced to a skeleton.

Srinagar

: Two militants were killed as the operation to flush out holed up ultras inside a government building in Pampore on the Srinagar-Jammu National Highway concluded on the third day on Wednesday, after security forces pounded the multi-storey structure with mortars and rockets.

The bodies of the two militants killed in the operation, which went on for well over 50 hours, have been recovered, officials said.

The operation took 57 hours as most parts of the concrete building had been reduced to a skeleton after many of its walls were blown up.

Elite Para commandos of the Army had been called in to neutralise the militants.

The operation was suspended at the nightfall on Tuesday to avoid casualties among the security forces. The operation resumed on Wednesday morning and Army’s Para commandos entered the building using a ladder while light-weight autonomous UAVs were used for surveillance and reconnaissance.

On Monday and Tuesday, the security forces had fired mortars and other projectiles to eliminate the militants who had taken up positions at vantage points on the upper floors of the 7-storey edifice in the sprawling campus of Jammu and Kashmir Entrepreneurship Development Institute (JKEDI). The building suffered damage in the firing and shelling. Flames and thick smoke could be seen billowing from the building.

Since the militants did not fire a single shot between Monday evening and late Tuesday afternoon, the troops assumed they were dead. But then one of the militants jumped out of the building and died.

Earlier, the security forces seized a boat, which was allegedly used by the militants to cross River Jhelum from one bank to the other before entering the JKEDI campus. “A boat believed to have been used by terrorists to cross the river from Rakh Shalina side to Sempora has been seized and its owner has been detained for questioning,” a police officer said on the condition of anonymity.

After storming inside the campus on Monday morning, the militants set a few mattresses inside a hostel room on fire to attract attention of the security forces. Troops arrived within minutes of smoke emanating from the building. Officials said that the fire tenders were rushed to the area but they were not allowed to enter the building due to security reasons.

In the initial exchange of fire, a soldier was injured in his foot. Amid intermittent firing, the security forces used Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), mortar bombs, light machine guns and small arms in an attempt to flush out militants.

Army sources said that two to three floors of the 7-storey building had already been 'sanitized' before the operation was put on hold at nightfall on Monday. “It is an inch-by-inch and step-by-step kind of control-gaining operation to avoid casualties as the militants are well positioned inside the building,” said one of the officers.

Before suspending operation on Monday night, floodlights and other equipment were brought in and used to keep a vigil at and around the campus to prevent the militants from escaping. The security personnel involved in the operation were asked to stay positioned behind these broad-beamed high intensity lights to avoid being seen and targeted by the militants.

A similar standoff earlier this year at the campus had led to the killing of three Army officials. On February 20, ten CRPF jawans were wounded, two of them fatally, in a militant ambush on a force convoy just outside the JKEDI campus. The gunmen had targeted the CRPF convoy and fled into the campus.

Three Army officials including had laid down their lives while fighting militants and three militants were also gunned down.