J&K: Army launches massive search operation for terrorists in Baramulla
Srinagar: Security forces launched a massive search operation in the old town of Baramulla on Monday, 55-km northwest of Srinagar, following reports about the presence of militants.
Officials and residents said that hundreds of troops from the Army and jawans of Jammu and Kashmir police, including those of its counterinsurgency Special Operations Group (SOG) and the CRPF laid siege to the border town situated on the banks of River Jhelum at about 3 am. “Announcements were made through mike-fitted Army and police vehicles asking people not to venture out. With the first light, the security forces began house-to-house search which is underway,” said a local reporter over the phone. The cordon-and-search operation has restricted the old Baramulla town’s about 100,000 residents to their homes, he added.
Earlier on the weekend, the security forces conducted similar operations in Baramulla’s Azad Gunj and Kanli Bagh areas but no arrests were made. A meeting of top Army commanders and senior officers of various security forces and intelligence agencies held at Raj Bhavan in Srinagar last week had decided to resume counterinsurgency operations across the Valley, where the unrest triggered by the killing of Hizb-ul-Mujahedin commander Burhan Muzaffar Wani entered its 101st day on Monday.
Meanwhile masked youth torched two passenger vehicles in Srinagar’s Parimpora area on Monday morning. Witnesses said that the youth stopped the vehicles coming towards Srinagar at the Fruit Mandi crossing along the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad Road at about 7.45 am, after thrashing their drivers and asking the passengers to get off torched them.
This apparently was to punish the drivers for violating the separatists’ protest calendar, which allows normal business only between 5 pm and 7 am. The police rushed to the spout but the attackers had already fled the scene, police sources said.
Earlier this month two auto-rickshaws and two private cars were also set on fire and dozens of other vehicles damaged by groups of youth in Srinagar and other parts of the Valley.
A report from southern Anantnag said that suspected militants snatched five rifles from the security guards at a Doordarshan low-power transmitter station in the district’s Dalvash village late Sunday night. The snatched weapons include 3 SLRs, one INSAS and one Carbine. Such incidents have increased mainly in south Kashmir districts over the past couple of months.
