A propaganda website run by the terrorist outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) has claimed that the four terrorists who stormed the Uri Army camp on Sunday were “home-grown Kashmiri Mujahideen [fighters].”
Foreign terrorists: DGMO Director-General of Military Operations (DGMO) Lt. Gen Ranbir Singh had earlier told media persons that the terrorists belonged to the JeM and all four killed were “foreign terrorists.”
In a message posted on Wednesday in the news section of its website alqalamonline.com , the JeM did not claim responsibility for the attacks but insisted that the terrorists belonged to Kashmir and that India was blaming Pakistan for the attacks without any basis.
The Urdu website, which is run by the JeM, also said the Kashmiri fighters set at least four barracks on fire and 12 soldiers were charred to death.
It said 19 Indian soldiers were killed in the attack, though the death toll is 18.
“Soldiers who target unarmed Kashmiris were running for cover that day. Though 13,000 soldiers were present at the Army camp in Uri, they had to call paratroopers from Baramulla to save the Indian soldiers,” the website said.
Army press note The Army had issued a press note after the Uri incident where it said the “fire fighting between the terrorists and the Army personnel continued from 5.30 a.m. to 8.30 a.m. [three hours].”
The Jaish claimed that the four Kashmiri men fought with the Army personnel for five hours.
After the attack at the Pathankot airbase on January 2, an audio message posted on the website had criticised the Pakistan government for “bowing before” allegations made by India but stopped short of taking the responsibility for the attack.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA), which is probing the Pathankot case had said that it was JeM, which carried out the attacks at the behest of its leader Masood Azhar.
Though the Indian Army has claimed that the Uri attackers belonged to JeM, the NIA said that it had not reached any such conclusion so far.
“We are still examining the attack site and the AK-47s recovered from the terrorists would be examined in the coming days. We have extracted DNA samples from the bodies of the four terrorists,” said an NIA official.
The Army had buried the bodies of the four terrorists after a post-mortem was conducted at the Army camp. During the Pathankot operation, NIA had preserved the bodies for three months even after it was able to establish their identities.
“Though Army has said that the terrorists belonged to JeM, their modus operandi and choice of weaponry point towards Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). They could be mixed also and trained by Pakistan’s ISI,” said the official.
