Militants attack Indian army camp in Kashmir

One BSF soldier killed, another injured

SRINAGAR: Less than a week after the Indian military claimed that they had neutralised ‘launch pads of terrorists’ in the Pakistani side of Kashmir, at least six militants attacked an Indian army camp in northern part of the disputed Kashmir region on Sunday night, killing one border guard and wounding another.

The brazen assault came two weeks after a similar attack killed 19 Indian soldiers and ratcheted up tensions between India and Pakistan. The latest attack on the camp of India’s 46 Rastriya Rifles in Baramulla, which also houses a unit of the Border Security Force (BSF), started at around 10:30pm and repeated exchanges of fire ensued.



“One BSF personnel was killed and one injured when militants tried to enter an army camp,” said local Superintendent of Police Imtiyaz Hussein. Local reports that two attackers had been killed could not immediately be confirmed.

Hussein said the attackers were not successful in breaching the perimeter of the camp, located inside the town, some 50 kilometres from Srinagar.

The army said on Twitter the ‘incident’ had been brought under control and firing had stopped, without saying whether any suspected militants had been killed or captured. “Terrorists opened fire on an army camp in Baramulla town,” Colonel Rajesh Kalia earlier told AFP.

Local media quoted residents as saying that loud gunfire could be heard coming from the camp.

The attack comes after India last week claimed it has launched ‘surgical strikes’ on ‘launch pads’ of militants across the Line of Control that divides the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir with Pakistan, prompting a furious denial from Islamabad.



Indian and Pakistani troops regularly exchange fire across the LoC, but sending ground troops over the highly militarised de facto border is next to impossible. Pakistan Army on Saturday flew local and foreign journalists to the LoC sectors where the Indians claim to have carried out surgical strikes in a bid to debunk the Indian myth.

The strikes, dubbed as farcical by Pakistani media, followed the deadly attack on one of India’s army bases in Kashmir that New Delhi blamed on Pakistan-based militants, triggering a public outcry and demands for military action. The September 18 raid on the Uri army base by militants hurling grenades left 19 Indian soldiers dead in the worst such attack in more than a decade.

Tensions are running high between the two countries since the Uri assault. On Sunday, the Indian Coast Guard claimed that they had apprehended a Pakistani boat with nine crew members from the Arabian Sea off Gujarat.



The coast guard ship, Samudra Pavak, apprehended the boat and its crew members at around 10:15 in the morning. As per the preliminary inquiry, crew members are reportedly fishermen. The Coast Guard has taken the boat with crew to Porbandar for further probe.

“The preliminary information indicates the crew to be Pakistani fishermen. However, the boat and the crew member are being escorted to Porbandar for further rummaging,” stated a release issued by the Defence PRO Wing Commander Abhishek Matiman.

Pakistan has vehemently denied Indian claims of intercepting and capturing a boat belonging to Pakistani fishermen off the Gujarat coast in the Arabian Sea.

On Sunday, Radio Pakistan cited the Foreign Office spokesperson as saying that neither any Pakistani boat nor any fishermen were missing.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 3^rd, 2016.