SRINAGAR/NEW DELHI: In one of the most brazen assaults by terrorists on the Indian Army in recent times, four terrorists armed with AK-47s fitted with under-barrel grenade launchers and a big cache of grenades, attacked an Army battalion centre in Kashmir’s Uri on Sunday morning killing at least 17 soldiers from the Bihar and Dogra Regiments and injuring about a score before the Pakistani-backed terrorists were gunned down in a three-hour gunfight from 5.30 am to 8.30 am.
Of the 17 slain soldiers, 15 were from the Bihar Regiment and the remaining two from 10th Dogra, defence sources said. On Sunday, Lt-Gen. Ranbir Singh, Director-General of Military Operations (DGMO), said in a South Block briefing that of the 17 Army casualties “13-14 casualties have been due to these tents/shelters having caught fire”.
General Singh also called up Pakistan’s DGMO to convey India’s “serious concerns”. He said: “All four killed were foreign terrorists and had carried with them items which had Pakistani markings. Initial reports indicate that the slain terrorists belong to Jaish-e-Mohammed tanzeem”.
“We were woken up from deep sleep by loud sounds of blasts and gunfire. We thought it could be the usual cross-border skirmish but when we peeked through the windows we saw the battalion headquarters of the Army in flames,” said Irshad Ahmed, a local reporter at Uri. At first light, the Uri residents also saw a thick cloud of black and grey smoke rising above the Army base. “Simultaneously we could hear deafening sounds of firing and mortar shelling and then a huge blast and with that the firing stopped,” he said.
Attack caught soldiers by surprise
Reports from Uri said that the deadly attack surprised soldiers in their sleep. Unconfirmed reports said the terrorists first attacked a diesel-refilling unit lobbing 17 grenades in 3 minutes, thus igniting the dump leading to a huge fire that razed many tents in a 150-metre area.
A source said: “It seems that the plan was to target the unarmed troops first before exploding themselves killing as many officers and men possible. “But the diesel dump explosion let out a huge plume of smoke which disoriented the terrorists too and they headed towards the soldiers’ barracks.”
Although General Singh said initial reports suggested that the attackers were foreign nationals and were probably from Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) group, several other officials said it may have been a “fidayeen” attack carried out by a freshly infiltrated Lashkar-e-Tayyaba group who could have sneaked in Uri along the Salamabad Nallah.
Helicopters from the Army’s 19 divisional headquarters in Baramulla were pressed into service and the injured Army jawans were evacuated from the encounter site and most of them brought to Srinagar where they have been admitted to the 92-Base Hospital. A few had also been shifted to RR Hospital in New Delhi in the late evening.
