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Militants escape after 9 day
encounter
JAMMU / WSN Bureau
India faced major
embarassment when despite the high military alert along the border,
a continuing encounter and direct supervision of top Indian brass
including the Army chief and intelligence agencies, militants in the
Poonch region engaged the security forces, army and commondos for
nine days and then made a clean getaway.
Hundreds of Indian soldiers were kept at bay by the militants
who seemed to be a handful, going by the official statements made by
the army chief and others.
For many days, the Indian Army kept claiming that it had
killed a few terrorists and had a three-tier ring to nab the
remaining, but finally on Friday the Army virtually admitted that
the counter-insurgency operation had failed and the Pakistani
terrorists in Bhatidhar forest seemed to have vanished into thin
air.
A near pussilianimous Indian media asked few questions, the
news hardly madeit to the front pages of Indian newspapers and the
electronic media gave a near miss when the long-drawn operation in
Bhatidhar forest was abruptly called off.
There were no explanations as to how the militants were able
to slip through the dragnet. As for what happened to the bodies of
the four militants presumably killed in the initial days of the
operation, the Army kep mum. A report in The Times of India quoted
officials to say that the "intercepted wireless messages between the
cornered militants and their masters in PoK had suggested that some
top commanders of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, including
Abu Dawood and Abu Qari, were present in the area during the
encounter."
The Bhatidhar encounter, the longest in recent years, also
claimed the lives of a junior commissioned officer, a soldier and a
special police officer. Brigadier (general staff) Gurdeep Singh of
16 Corps admitted that the militants seemed to have escaped.
Incidentally, the Line of Control is barely 7 km from Bhatidhar
forest.
14 January 2009
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