5 soldiers martyred in anti-terror op in J&K
| Date :06-May-2023 |
RAJOURI (J&K),
FIVE Army personnel were killed and a Major was injured on Friday in an explosion triggered by terrorists in the thickly forested Kandi area in Jammu and Kashmir’s Rajouri district where an operation was underway to flush out terrorists, officials said. The operation, still underway, was launched following inputs about the presence of a group of terrorists involved in an ambush on an Army truck in Bhata Dhurian of Poonch district last month, in which five security personnel were killed.
Before Friday’s attack, the twin border districts of Poonch and Rajouri have witnessed seven major terrorist incidents since October 2021 in which 29 people, including 22 Army personnel, have been killed. As the anti-terrorist operation was underway, mobile Internet facilities in the Rajouri area have been suspended. According to a statement from the Army’s Northern Command in the morning, its personnel have been conducting “relentless Intelligence-based operations to flush out a group of terrorists involved in an ambush on an Army truck in the Tota Gali area of Bhata Dhurian in Jammu region last month”.
The People’s Anti-Fascist Front (PAFF), a shadow organisation of the Jaish-e-Mohammed terror outfit, has claimed responsibility for Friday’s attack.“On specific information about the presence of terrorists in the Kandi Forest in the Rajouri Sector, a joint operation was launched on May 3. Around 7.30 am on Friday, a search team established contact with a group of terrorists well entrenched in a cave. The area is thickly vegetated with rocky and steep cliffs. “The terrorists triggered an explosive device in retaliation,” it said. In the morning, two Army men belonging to the Special Forces were killed and four, including Major, injured during the operation in Rajouri sector. Later in the day, three died in a hospital in Udhampur.
“There is a likelihood of casualties in the terrorist group and the operation is in progress,” it said. The slain soldiers were Lance Naik Ruchin Singh Rawat from Gairsain in Uttarakhand, Paratrooper Siddhant Chettri from Darjeeling in West Bengal, Naik Arvind Kumar from Kangra district in Himachal Pradesh, Havildar Neelam Singh from Jammu and Paratrooper Pramod Negi from Sirmaur in Himachal Pradesh. Additional Director General of Police (ADGP) Mukesh Singh rushed to the spot and reviewed the security setup, they said. The security forces have been engaged in a massive combing operation for the past 15 days in the twin border districts of Rajouri and Poonch districts. The operations started after the attack on Army vehicle in Bhatta Dhurian in which five soldiers were killed.