Officials said today that the bodies of the missing JCO and a soldier were found on Saturday, bringing the total number of army members killed in the gunfight between security forces and militants on Thursday to four.
On October 11, militants attacked a search party in Poonch’s Surankote forest, killing five Army personnel, including a Junior Commissioned Officer (JCO). As a result, the overall number of soldiers killed in the forests between Poonch and Rajouri has risen to nine.
After receiving information regarding the presence of militants, security authorities conducted a search operation in Bhata Dhurian village on Thursday evening. Two soldiers were killed in the gunfight, while two others, including a Junior Commissioned Officer (JCO), went missing.
“Both the bodies were retrieved on Saturday evening and have now been brought to Primary Health Center Bhata Dhurian for post-mortem examination,” an official said.
Subedar Ajay Singh and Naik Harendra Singh were the soldiers killed, according to an army spokeswoman. The bodies of the two were found in the densely forested Nar Khas area near Mendhar, he said. He said the two were involved in the search activities initiated to find the militants hiding in the forest.
On October 14, 2021, connection with the duo was disrupted, according to the spokesman.
Meanwhile, officials said a large search operation to locate suspected militants in the forest areas of the twin border districts of Poonch and Rajouri reached its sixth day on Saturday.
Gunshots were heard as Army and police joint search parties resumed their operation in Poonch’s Mendhar district, they said. “However, it was not immediately clear whether it was speculative firing by the search parties or fresh contact was established with the militants,” they said.
According to officials, the terrain is mountainous, and the forest is dense, making the operation tough and risky.
Since Thursday, when riflemen Vikram Singh Negi and Yogambar Singh, both from Uttarakhand, were slain in an encounter with militants in the Nar Khas forest, a wide forest area of Mendhar has been under tight security cordon.
On October 11, insurgents attacked a search party in Poonch’s Surankote forest, killing five Army personnel, including a Junior Commissioned Officer (JCO).
The Army search groups and the fleeing militants exchanged fire in the nearby Thanamandi forest in Rajouri on the same day.
The officials said that the entire forest area from Mendhar to Thanamandi “remains under a strict cordon and a massive search operation is on to neutralise the terrorists who are moving from one place to another in an attempt to escape the dragnet.”
Because of the ongoing operation, traffic between Mendhar and Thanamandi on the Jammu-Rajouri highway has been suspended for the second day, they added.
Vivek Gupta, the Rajouri-Poonch range’s Deputy Inspector General of Police, said on Tuesday that “terrorists involved in the attack on security forces in Poonch had been present in the area for the last two to three months.”
Infiltration efforts have increased in Rajouri and Poonch in the Jammu region since June this year, leading to the deaths of nine militants in separate encounters.
(With inputs from Kashmir Images Newspaper.)
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