A senior officer of the National Security Guard (NSG) was killed in an accidental explosion during combing operations at Pathankot air base on Sunday pushing the number of casualties among security forces to seven. The officer has been identified as Lt Col Niranjan.
Defence ministry officials said that it was an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) which went off during combing operations in the morning which killed Lt Col Niranjan and likely injuring few others.
In addition to ending confusion on the casualties among security forces in the Pathankot attack, defence ministry officials confirmed that six soldiers had lost their lives.
> The six include one Garud commando and five soldiers from the Defence Security Corps (DSC) while one Garud commando and eight DSC personnel were injured.
“Additional casualties are because three DSC personnel passed away in the hospital during the night,” officials said.
As operations were underway on Saturday, one Garud and two DSC personnel were killed but confusion prevailed with reports of higher casualty rate among the security forces. Still the death toll is unusually high given that there was prior intelligence of an attack and forces were on high alert.
