Terrorists Who Attacked IAF Convoy in J&K’s Poonch Hiding in Woods Near LoC

Srinagar: The Indian Army’s elite PARA Commandos and other special forces early Sunday joined the security forces to chase and capture alive or dead three Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militants involved in Saturday’s sneak attack on a convoy of the Indian Air Force (IAF) at Shahsitar in Jammu and Kashmir’s frontier district of Poonch.

Five IAF personnel were injured, three of them critically, in the terror attack. They were quickly airlifted to the Army’s New Command Hospital in the garrison town of Udhampur where one of them Corporal Vikky Pahade succumbed to the injuries late Saturday night.

The Army and J&K police sources in the district headquarters of Poonch said that Army helicopters and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have also been pressed into service for reconnaissance and surveillance in the Gursai forest area of the region.

The militants are known to have fled into the woods after attacking a Stallion 4x4 and another logistic vehicle of the IAF at Shahsitar, an area in Poonch’s Surankote sub-division about 15-km from the Line of Control (LoC), at around 6.30 pm on Saturday.

IAF wrote on microblogging site ‘X’ on Sunday, “The CAS Air Chief Marshal VR Chaudhari & all personnel of Indian Air Force salute the Braveheart Corporal Vikky Pahade, who made the supreme sacrifice in Poonch Sector, in the service of the nation. Our deepest condolences to the bereaved family. We stand firmly by your side in this hour of grief.”

Soon after the attack, the Army reinforcements were joined by the Central Armed Police Forces (CAPFs) and Special Operations Group of the J&K police to launch a massive search operation in the area. “The massive cordon-and-search operation was resumed at the first light on Sunday after a night cordon in the area,” a police official said over the phone from Poonch.

Additional Director General of Police (Jammu range), Anand Jain, and senior officers of the Army and intelligence agencies flew over the area early Sunday and later visited the place where the ambush had taken place. The IAF convoy was returning to a base at the Sanai Top, a strategic area, when it was attacked.

The police sources said that the investigation into Saturday’s attack has revealed that the assailants had besides AK assault rifles used, at least, one M4 carbine and steel bullets to cause maximum casualties among the IAF personnel. The M4 carbine is a 5.56×45mm NATO, gas-operated, magazine-fed carbine developed in the United States during the 1980s.

The police officials had said on Saturday that they believed it was the same group of hardcore terrorists including an LeT commander from Pakistan which has been involved in a series of such and similar incidents in the twin districts of Poonch and Rajouri in the recent past including December 21, 2023 ambush on the Army vehicles at Bufliaz in which four soldiers were killed and three others injured.

A report from Poonch said that the police has detained several people for questioning following the latest terror attack whereas the “well-coordinated” cordon-and-search-operations being jointly carried out by the Army, the J&K police and the CAPFs have been extended to Sanai and Sheendara Top areas. However, no contact had been established with the militants till the filing of this report.

Poonch is part of the Anantnag-Rajouri Lok Sabha constituency where the polling was scheduled to be held in the third phase of elections on May 7 but was amid recent torrential rains and fresh snowfalls deferred till May 25 by the Election Commission of India, citing “various logistic, communication and natural barrier of connectivity” as the reason.

Last month, militants shot dead a J&K government employee Muhammad Razaq who was a brother of a Territorial Army jawan, in Kunda Top village of the Shahdra area of neighbouring Rajouri district. Days after the gruesome incident, a Village Defence Guard (VDG) Muhammad Sharief was killed in a militant attack on a joint part of the J&K police and the VDGs in the Basantgarh area of Udhampur district.

Following these incidents, the J&K police had released pictures of two LeT cadres, including suspected Pakistani national Abu Hamza, who, it said, were involved in the murder of Mr. Razaq and announced a cash reward of Rs 10 lakh on his head.

The Indian Army has suffered heavy losses in the twin border districts of Poonch and Rajouri during a couple of years.

On December 21 last year, four Army jawans lost their lives and three others were injured when two vehicles- a Maruti Gypsy and a 1-ton truck-came under a sneak attack by a group of heavily equipped LeT cadres in the Dera ki Gali area of Poonch. Following this incident, three civilians identified as Safeer Hussain, 37, Mohammed Showkat, 26 and Shabir Ahmed, 32, all residents of Topa Mastandara village in Poonch district, were allegedly killed in Army custody, triggering protests.

Earlier on October 11, 2023, five Army jawans were killed in an attack by militants in the Dera Ki Gali area itself. Following this attack, the Army, the J&K police and other security forces had intensified their operation ‘flush out’ against a group of heavily armed militants which had taken positions at vantage points midst woods in the region in the Pir Panjal Range.

During this operation, two more Army soldiers including a Junior Commissioned Officer lost their lives on October 16. In an almost month-long operation in which Army’s PARA Commandos also took part, as many as nine army personnel including two JCOs were killed. On November 22, five soldiers including two captains and two militants were killed in a two-day-long gun battle at Bajimaal in Rajouri.

The Army and police sources said that the region has witnessed nearly a dozen major terror attacks and encounters since October 11, 2021 when five Army jawans including a JCO lost their lives in a clash with militants in Chamrer woods of Surankote. In these incidents as many as 37 soldiers and officers have laid down their lives.

However in November last year, the security forces gunned down a “hardcore terrorist” from Pakistan along with another LeT cadre at Solki, a remote area of Rajouri surrounded by dense forests. In this gunfight, Captain M. V. Pranjal of 63 Rashtriya Rifles, a resident of Karnataka, Captain Shubham Gupta of 9 Para (Special Forces), resident of Agra in Uttar Pradesh, Paratrooper Sachin Laur, from Goroula village in Khair Tehsil of Aligarh district in UP and Havildar Abdul Majid of the Special Force, a resident of Poonch in J&K and Lance Naik Sanjay Bist, a resident of Nainital in Uttarakhand, laid down their lives whereas a Major and a Sepoy were injured.

The Army had said that the slain LeT commander known by his assumed name or alias ‘Quari’ was active in the Rajouri-Poonch belt for the past one year. “He was a Pakistani national and hardcore terrorist who had been trained on the Pak-Afghan front. He was a highly ranked terrorist leader of the LeT and active in Rajouri-Poonch along with his group from past one year,” the police sources had said, adding that Quari was also an expert in IED fabrication, a trained sniper and that he operated from caves in the Rajouri-Poonch belt.

Pir Panjal Range is a chain of mountains in the Lower Himalayan region located in the Western Himalayas of the subcontinent. Poonch-Rajouri is located near the Line of Control (LoC). Poonch shares a de facto border with the Poonch district of the Pakistan-occupied-Jammu and Kashmir.

In the past, the Indian Army officials have said that because of the vastness of the area with thick forests and undergrowth the security forces often find it difficult to “establish physical contact with the terrorists who sometimes also choose to move to the other side of the LoC to escape combing and search operations”.