Tangdhar encounter: Desperate to make presence felt, is JeM trying to regroup in the Kashmir Valley?
Srinagar: At the break of dawn on Wednesday, three militants from Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) outfit attacked a Gorkha Rifles Camp along Kalsuri Ridge in Tangdhar area near the Line of Control in north Kashmir’s Kupwara district, leaving a military contractor dead before all the attackers were gunned down.
NN Joshi, the defence spokesperson in Srinagar said the Army killed three militants in the operation by “foiling an attempted suicide attack”. But witnesses told Firstpost that the militants managed to sneak into the Army camp, firing indiscriminately, which resulted in the killing of a civilian and injuries to an army jawan.
“The militants were effectively intercepted by the Army’s Quick Reaction Teams which hemmed the terrorists into a cordon, thus preventing their escape. In the ensuing gunfight, three militants were killed. Three weapons have so far been recovered from the killed militants. Operations are in progress to fully sanitise the area,” the spokesperson said.
The militants began the attack by firing grenades at an oil depot inside the camp, blowing off several vehicles and later stormed the officer’s mess. Tangdhar sector is close to the LoC in Kupwara district, about 110 km from Srinagar, the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir, and the region has witnessed an escalation in violence by militants recently, who are trying to infiltrate into the Valley, according to Army sources.
The Tangdhar sector has also been used as an infiltration route for several years by insurgents.
Just last week, Colonel Santosh Mahadik, Commanding Officer of 41 Rashtriya Rifles, was killed after being critically injured in an encounter with militants near Haji Naka forest area of Kupwara, near the LoC. Late on Wednesday afternoon, the militant outfit JeM claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that three militants, who attacked the camp in the early hours of the morning in Tangdhar, were its members.
What has, however, alarmed the security agencies is the renewed attempts being made by JeM to regroup in Kashmir valley. Although the outfit’s presence in Kashmir valley remains abysmal, but if the recent incidents of violence are an indication, the spike signals a fresh push by the outfit to make a comeback in Kashmir valley.
“You need to show some kind of presence, because they (JeM) have become a non-entity in Pakistan. So they are desperately trying to cross over to this side of Kashmir and garner media attention by carrying out such attacks,” a senior counter-insurgency police officer told Firstpost.
The outfit was on the verge of extinction in Kashmir in mid-2013 when two of its three last surviving commanders were killed in that year, leaving the outfit with a total cadre capacity of eight militants in Kashmir, the lowest since it was formed 13 years ago, according to the Jammu and Kashmir Police.
After the loss of two of its most senior commanders in Kashmir, the outfit tried to reinforce its ranks by sending a batch of at least eight militants operating in south Kashmir. Many of them were killed by security forces.
JeM, a Pakistan-based militant group, which has been operating in Kashmir valley since 2000, is headed by Maulana Masood Azhar, who was released in exchange for hostages of hijacked IC-814 Indian Airlines plane hijacked by Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. Azhar was arrested in Srinagar in 1994 on terrorism charges.
Jaish has been accused for the 13 December, 2001 terrorist attack on Parliament in New Delhi. The outfit was banned by the Indian government under provisions of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) on 25 October, 2001.
The outfit carried out the first suicide attack in Kashmir in April 2000 when an 18-year-old Srinagar boy detonated a car-bomb outside the Army’s 15 Corps headquarters in Srinagar, killing one person and injuring seven others. It was also for the first time that a militant laced with explosives blew himself up in the conflict-ridden state.
The outfit targeted the Army base again in December that year when a suicide bomber, who was later identified as Mohammad Bilal, 24, from Birmingham, England, blew himself up. The group was also involved in several high profile attacks inside and outside Kashmir including the attack on Parliament in New Delhi and the state legislative Assembly.
A senior intelligence official said the outfit has the strength of about seven to eight members in the Valley, after two members of the outfit were killed on October 4 in an encounter with security forces in Awantipura area of south Kashmir. “The militants identified as Adil Pathan and Burmi were Pakistani nationals,” a senior police officer said.
The two-decade old militancy in Kashmir, which began to show a gradual decrease during the last decade, made a violent comeback in 2013 as militants carried out a series of audacious attacks across the region in which dozens of security forces personnel were killed.
“Although it would be very difficult to infiltrate in Kashmir valley because of the highly sophisticated machinery adopted by the Army on Line of Control, but they (militants) always wait for the right opportunity to sneak in,” a senior security official said.
Read full article: First Post
An FIR has been registered against BJP MP and Union Minister Sanjeev Balyan for his controversial remarks against UP Minister Read more
With less than 48 hours separating the G20 Summit from the Paris carnage, the discourse at the meeting of leaders Read more
ANTALYA, TURKEY: President Barack Obama declared on Monday that his strategy for defeating the Islamic State is working despite last Read more
NEW DELHI: India has frozen assets worth Euro 3 lakh (over Rs 2.12 core) of over three dozen entities on Read more
