Five soldiers and an equal number of militants were killed in the four-day long “intense gunfight in a snow-bound area” along the Line of Control (LoC) in the north Kashmir’s Kupwara, the Army said on Monday.
“It was an intense hand-to-hand battle in which all five Pakistan-backed terrorists were eliminated. However, the Army lost five of its best soldiers, three on the site and two more as they were being airlifted to a nearby military hospital,” a Srinagar-based Army spokesman said.
The Army sources said the footsteps on snow were first reported in the morning on April 1 in an inaccessible pocket of the Keran Sector, close to the LoC. Due to the difficult terrain and inclement weather, the group of terrorists could not be engaged, the Army said. The combing operation started again on April 4 and the main contact with the militants was established on the morning of April 5.
One squad, following the footsteps on the snow on April 5, walked over a cornice and fell into a nallah, putting them face to face with the armed militants. “It was a close quarter battle at virtually point blank range. The remains of the soldiers and terrorists were found within two to three metres of each other,” Army sources said.
Among the soldiers who died in the operation was a Junior Commissioned Officer (JCO) of the elite Para unit. The deceased soldiers were identified as as Subedar Sanjeev Kumar, Havildar Davendra Singh, Paratrooper Bal Krishan, Paratrooper Amit Kumar and Paratrooper Chhatrapal Singh.
The militants were believed to have sneaked into Kashmir from the tough Zurhama forest range. These are the first major casualties inflicted on the security personnel in Kashmir since the Pulwama attack in February last year, which left 40 CRPF jawans dead.
Meanwhile, three families from south Kashmir’s Shopian and Kulgam have approached the police and claimed the slain militants in Kupwara included their kin. However, the police said it was in the process of ascertaining the identifies of the militants.
