Samba strike 2nd in 2 days

Militants on Saturday launched a sneak attack on an Army camp in Jammu and Kashmir’s frontier district of Samba, injuring two soldiers and a civilian passer-by.

Both the militants were shot dead by troops in the ensuing gunfight, officials said.

The militant duo, which targeted the Army camp in Meshwara area of Samba with rifle fire and grenades around 5.45 am, was believed to be part of the group of heavily-armed men which had reportedly sneaked into Jammu and Kashmir from across the international border (IB) with Pakistan early on Friday and soon attacked a police station in the neighbouring Kathua district.

In that attack, four people were killed.

The gunmen had killed the civilian driver of a jeep which they had captured earlier to relocate to the Raj Bagh police station of Kathua.

The authorities had insisted that only two militants were involved in Friday’s terror strike, but reports from the area had suggested one or two more militants were also part of the group and apparently did escape from the scene.

A defence spokesperson, Lt. Col. Manish Mehta, said it was difficult to say whether the two militants were from the same group which had attacked the Kathua police station. He also said that no one has been injured in the latest militant attack and that the civilian who sustained injuries had actually fallen off his bicycle during the firing. “It is not a bullet or splinter injury,” the spokesperson said.

However, the Army and the police issued contradictory statements on the attack in Samba. While the police said that the militant duo entered the Meshwara camp of the Army’s 81 Armoured Regiment along the Jammu-Pathankot highway and fired their AK assault rifles and hurled grenades, injuring an Army major and a jawan besides a civilian passerby, the Army claimed that the attack didn’t take place inside the camp and none from the Army was injured.

Lt. Col. Mehta reiterated, “At 5.45 am, the terrorists had opened fire and let me tell you nobody has been injured. No soldier or civilian has been injured. The individual who has been injured had fallen off his bicycle during the firing (sic).”

Reports said reinforcements from three nearby Army camps were rushed to Meshwara to take on the militants. Also, the Army moved in infantry combat vehicles from Jammu.