Srinagar: The 48-hour-long armed standoff outside Jammu and Kashmir’s highway town of Pampore ended on Monday with the killing of all the three militants holed up in a multi-storey building by Army troops.
Officials said the slain men were "exceptionally motivated and highly trained terrorists" most probably belonging to Lashkar-e-Taiba.
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The Army in its final assault against the militants fired mortar bombs and rockets on the edifice. The main target of the light artillery fire was the top floor of the main block at J&K Entrepreneurship Development Institute (JK EDI) campus at Sempora, Pampore, about 16-km south of here, where the militant trio had been restricted to by Army troops including crack teams from its Para Special Force earlier. Army also used Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) fitted with cameras to know the position of militants.
The corpses of the slain militants were later during a combing operation retrieved from the debris by the security forces. Their identity is being ascertained, officials said. In Delhi, CRPF DG Prakash Mishra said that they appeared to be Lashkar-e-Taiba cadres. So far, none of the militant group active in Kashmir has owned responsibility. A police officer involved in the operation said, “Clearly they were exceptionally motivated and highly trained terrorists”.
The troops stormed the building around noon on Sunday and then using their highly specialised combat skills began securing it floor by floor and room by room. The campus is spread over 10,000 sq.ft and the main block where the militants had entrenched themselves has more than fifty classrooms and office cambers besides several halls, storerooms and washrooms.
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However, in their attempt to overrun the building, two Army captains Pawan Kumar and Tushar Mahajan and corporal Om Prakash laid down their lives. Earlier on Saturday the militants believed to be one local and two foreigners had ambushed a Srinagar-bound convoy of CRPF killing two jawans and injuring nine others. In the subsequent shootout, an employee of the JK EDI Abdul Gani Mir, 48, also lost his life.
The gunmen then entrenched themselves in the main block of the campus. They were quickly surrounded by security forces from Army, CRPF and J&K police’s counterinsurgency Special Operations Group (SOG).
The firing which had stopped at nightfall on Sunday resumed with the first light on Monday. Earlier the officials had said that the militants were using 'shrewd' and 'dodging' tactics against combat forces and have used their ammunition judiciously. Officials said a total of 16 security personnel were injured in the incidents.
Security men take position outside the JKEDI building. (Photo: DC/H U Naqash)
Explaining the delay in flushing out militants, officials said that they were advantageously positioned in the main concrete multi-storey block at the campus. After the troops stormed the building, the militants scattered and then started moving from room to room and floor to floor.
However before the final assault was launched, a senior Army commander told reporters that it was in no hurry to flush out the militants as the main aim was to avoid further casualty to security forces. General Officer Commanding of the Srinagar-based Chinar Corps, Lt. Gen. Satish Dua, said, “There is no time limit. There is no hurry. Our main purpose is to make sure that we do not have any more casualties. We will take as long as it takes to clear the building.”
He also said the J&K EDI is a vast campus and it required specialised forces to clear the holed-up militants.
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Meanwhile, about twenty persons including five policemen were injured as massive protests by residents erupted in the town of Pampore on Monday. Irate crowds while chanting pro-freedom slogans and after defying curfew-like restrictions imposed on the highway town and its neighbourhood earlier to dissuade protests made repeated attempts to relocate to the encounter site. Overnight and also during the day on Monday, mosque loudspeakers broadcast ‘revolutionary’ songs and women sung folksongs and ‘wanwon’ while men folk were chanting pro-azadi slogans in their attempt to encourage holed up militants.
Witnesses said that police and CRPF fired teargas canisters and pellet guns to push back the marching protesters who responded by hurling rocks at them. The protesters burned used tyres along the stretch of the Srinagar-Jammu highway passing through the town.
Read: Pampore encounter: No hurry to flush out militants, says army
Jammu and Kashmir police had on February 18 issued an advisory to the public asking them to stay away from the sites of encounters between security forces and militants. It said 144 CrPC immediately comes into force at and around encounter sites and asked civilians to stay, at least, two kilometres away from encounter site so that they don’t “fall prey to a stray bullet”.
This came days after two youth including a woman were killed and ten other people were injured when security forces fired live ammunition after sections of protesters while chanting pro-azadi slogans turned violent near an encounter site in the State’s southern district of Pulwama.
Read: Army salutes bravery of its officers killed in J&K encounter
As the incident evoked widespread anger across the Valley and the authorities had to impose curfew-like restrictions at several places to hold back protests, Governor N.N. Vohra held a series of meeting with police, Army and other law enforcing authorities to discuss the fallout and issued them strict instruction to exercise restraint while dealing with such situations.
