57-hour controlled strategy pays off - Two militants killed in Pampore

Paramilitary troopers look at the building in Pampore where the
militants were hiding on Tuesday. (AFP)

MUZAFFAR RAINA, TT, Sempora (Pampore), Oct. 12: A controlled, 57-hour operation against two militants who had taken over a sturdy building on Srinagar's outskirts paid off today when both were neutralised without the security forces suffering any casualty.

The militants, possibly from the Lashkar, had taken over the Entrepreneur Development Institute hostel on Monday morning, prompting hundreds of security personnel including commandos from the army's 9 Para unit - it took part in the September surgical strikes - to launch an operation to eliminate them.

Major General Ashok Narula, who heads the counter-insurgency Victor force, said two militants hiding in the building had been killed.

One militant died last evening after jumping out of a window possibly because of fire or smoke, officials said. The second was killed early today.

From Day One, the security forces had been reluctant to launch a close-quarter fight to prevent a repeat of the February operation in which their personnel died during a hand-to-hand combat with militants hiding in another building in the same complex.

The strategy this time was to pulverise the building with grenades, rockets, heavy machine gun fire and IEDs. The forces stuck to the script and succeeded in eliminating the militants without suffering any losses.

In the first few hours of the gunfight, a soldier and a policemen received minor injuries, unlike the February operation in which two captains and a soldier of an elite para-commando unit lost their lives.

The security forces fired hundreds of grenades, rockets and massive IEDs, which are said to have significantly damaged the hostel built at a cost of Rs 16 crore.

Sources said when the army was fully confident of eliminating both militants, they launched a room intervention - where they clear room after room - this morning.

A section of the security establishment felt that instead of taking three days, the operation could have ended fast had the building been stormed. Police sources said its Special Operations Group had even offered its services but the army preferred a deliberate operation.

Major General Narula said such operations were "detailed and time-consuming". "There are 60 rooms (in the building) with attached bathrooms, which makes it 120 rooms.... Things are not that simple. It takes time," he said.

Valley police chief Javed Mujtaba Gillani said the militants' plan was possibly to inflict casualties on security forces during the operation. "The militants had chosen a building where they could stay for long and draw attention," he said.

Gillani said security forces were in a state of high alert after last month's Uri attack, in which 19 jawans lost their lives.

Officials at the Entrepreneur Development Institute said infrastructure built up over years had been lost in a space of eight months. "Our main building was built at a cost of Rs 20 crore and it suffered extensive damage in the February gunfight. Now we have lost our hostel, too. We have been using it as our office during these months," an official said.