5 Spl Forces men killed in hand-to-hand battle
nNEW DELHI/SRINAGAR: Five commandos belonging to an elite army Special Forces (SF) unit were killed in action along the Line of Control (LOC) in Kashmir’s Keran sector on Sunday during an intense close-quarters battle with an equal number of terrorist infiltrators who were all eliminated, three officers familiar with the details said on Monday on condition of anonymity.
The bodies of the commandos and the terrorists were found barely two to three metres from each other, said one of the officers cited above.
In a statement, the army said the five terrorists were killed in “an intense hand-to-hand battle”.
“The Indian Army launched a daring operation at the LOC and engaged Pakistani-supported infiltrators in a close-quarter battle in heavy snow, neutralising the entire infiltrating batch of five. Four soldiers under the command of a junior commissioned officer from one of the most professional Para SF units were helidropped near the LOC after information on the infiltrators was received,” the army said.
Three of the commandos were killed at the site, while two succumbed to their injuries while being airlifted to a military hospital. The fallen commandos were identified as Subedar Sanjeev Kumar from Himachal Pradesh, Havildar Davendra Singh from
Uttarakhand, Paratrooper Bal Krishan from Himachal Pradesh, Paratrooper Amit Kumar from Uttarakhand and Paratrooper Chhatrapal Singh from Rajasthan. The paratroopers suffered several gunshot wounds; paratrooper Amit Kumar took 15 bullets, said a source.
As of now, there’s no confirmation about the group the terrorists belonged to.
The army began looking for this batch of terrorists on April 1, with ground troops reporting footprints near the LOC fence that was covered under snow, said the first officer cited above.
The search teams made contact with the terrorists, engaging them in firefights four times between April 1 and April 4, before the commandos from 4 Para (SF) were called in to take over the operation and hunt the intruders, he added.
Commandos from 4 Para (SF) carried out key missions during the 2016 surgical strikes against terror pads in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK).
“Based on visuals from unmanned aerial vehicles, the SF troops were staged forward to the nearest battalion headquarters by air as the location was cut off,” said a second officer.
At the crack of dawn on Sunday, the five commandos began tailing the infiltrators following their footmarks on the snow. Several hours later, the footprints indicated that the infiltrators had gone towards a nullah.
“The SF men split into two squads and approached their target to prevent them from escaping,” said a third officer. “One of the squads didn’t realise that they were on a cornice. The snow block collapsed, taking the squad leader and the two scouts down all the way to the nullah, where the terrorists were sitting... It led to a close-quarter battle at almost point blank range,” he added.
The two commandos in the other squad rushed to provide support to their comrades locked in close-quarters fight with the terrorists. In the engagement, the five commandos were successful in killing all the infiltrators.
“Despite the fall, the commandos killed all the terrorists because of their superior training standards,” the third officer said.
“Pakistan and its army are fomenting terrorism in India to hide its failure to fight Covid-19. The Indian Army is not only fighting Covid with utmost professionalism both in India and in neighbouring countries but it is alsoconcurrentlydefeatingpakistan’s evil designs along the LOC and in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir,” said an Army officer, asking not to be named.
Lieutenant General Satish Dua (retd), a former commander of the Srinagar-based HQS 15 Corps, said infiltration attempts begin around this time of the year as terrorists try to take advantage of heavy snow in the higher reaches to sneak into Kashmir.
“It was sheer misfortune that the commandos were on a cornice that collapsed and it ended in a hand-to-hand fight…also, this is the first summer after the removal of Article 370 and Pakistan army will step up efforts to push in terrorists,” Dua said.