Major Terror Strike Averted on India-Pak Border

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From 'The Peninsula (Qatar)': The Indian Army plans a massive operation to weed out infiltrators from areas along the India-Pakistan border after foiling a major terror strike in Samba in Jammu and Kashmir yesterday, a day after a gun battle between the security forces and militants left six killed. One militant who had attacked the Samba garrison, 45 km from Jammu, yesterday morning was killed in a gun fight with the troops. The militant was believed to be part of the group that had managed to sneak onto the Indian side last Thursday, and then killed six people, including two soldiers and a photojournalist, in a gun battle here on Sunday. The militant's body was recovered and the army found one AK-47 rifle, eight rifle grenades, 270 rounds of AK-47 rifle ammunition and 10 magazines of the automatic assault rifle, one under barrel grenade launcher (UBGL) - all sufficient to kill dozens of people.

Lt Col S D Goswami, defence spokesperson based in Jammu, said the two terrorists killed in Sunday's gun battle and one more shot down yesterday had the task of carrying out a massacre, the spokesman said. The army said the intrusion of the militants on Thursday, their subsequent attempts to reach the Jammu-Pathankote highway, and yesterday’s attack pointed towards their design to execute a massacre along the lines of the 2002 Kaluchak incident in which terrorists had killed more than three dozen people, mostly the family members of soldiers. "This nefarious design has been effectively foiled," Goswami said.

"The meticulous and well-planned operation, conducted under the overall supervision of Lt Gen Vinay Sharma, general officer commanding of the Rising Star Corps, was not only able to save the lives of civilian hostages held by the terrorist group but also managed to avoid collateral damage to civilian property in the heavily populated civil built-up area," he said. The next step, according to army sources, is to conduct mopping-up operations along the entire border belt in the Samba sector to find out if there were more infiltrators than the three already killed in the two operations.

"The idea is to look for tell-tale signs of the movement of the militants in the area," a senior army officer said, requesting anonymity. "A fresh alert has been sounded for the troops guarding the LoC (Line of Control) as militants might attempt to cross over from other areas as well," he said. The Northern Command of the army that guards the LoC in Kashmir has asked its units for greater vigil, the army source said. Instructions have also been issued for greater vigil against terrorist attacks in crowded areas, army camps and key installations, the official said.