Two terrorists shot dead near LOC
SUSPECTED TO BE PART OF PAKISTAN’S EFFORT TO SCALE UP VIOLENCE IN J&K TO MARK THE FIRST ANNIVERSARY OF ARTICLE 370’S ABROGATION
NEWDELHI: TWO terrorists entering Jammu and Kashmir’s Kupwara district were shot dead by the army barely 100 metres from the Line of Control past midnight, a senior army officer said on Saturday.
The terrorists are suspected to be part of Pakistan’s effort to scale up violence in Jammu and Kashmir to mark the first anniversary of the abrogation of Article 370. One of the two has been identified as 23-year-old Idrees Ahmad Bhat, a local from Kupwara’s Handwara who went to Pakistan via Wagah border in 2018. “We believe they are part of terror group Lashkar-e-taiba,” a police officer said, asking not to be identified. The second man, unidentified so far, is suspected to be a foreign terrorist.
Besides AK 47 assault rifles and hundreds of bullets, the terrorists killed on Saturday also had a pistol made in China and four grenades based on Austrian technology that were made by Pakistan’s ordnance factory. The grenades are concrete evidence that links the terrorists to the Pakistan army and government, added the police officer.
Similar grenades were also used by Jaish-e-mohammed terrorists who stormed Parliament in 2001. The 480-gram anti-personnel grenade is filled with 95 gram of highly explosive organic compound PETN and 5,000 steel balls, designed to kill or maim everyone in a 20-metre radius.
In the Saturday morning encounter with the army’s Sikh Light Infantry soldiers deployed on the anti-infiltration grid, the two terrorists were shot before they could use them. The police officer said the soldiers spotted the two terrorists moving from an area close to a Pakistani Post across Nowgam sector in Kupwara district.
They had cut the fence to cross the LOC and were stopped by the soldiers about 50-100 metres in. Major General Virendra Vats, GOC 19 division, said the soldiers took appropriate response to eliminate the terrorists.
Top counter-terror officers said the infiltration attempt comes at a time when the security grid was on high alert over intelligence inputs that terror groups sponsored by Pakistan’s ISI may use load-carrying Chinese commercial drones, like the ones used to smuggle weapons and drugs into Punjab, to ferry firearms and explosives to its terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir.
The army is working to deploy anti-drone systems to shoot down such drones. The counter-terror officers said security agencies prevented Pakistan-based terror groups from carrying out deadly terror strikes through the summer, the first after India scrapped Jammu and Kashmir’s special status on August 5-6 last year.