7 army men killed in gun battle

Mangalore Today News Network

Srinagar/New Delhi, Nov 30, 2016, DHNS: Seven army personnel, including a major from Bengaluru, were killed in a fierce gun battle with militants at an army base in Nagrota, near Jammu, on Tuesday.

In action that continued all day, the armed forces shot dead three terrorists who had managed to sneak inside the heavily guarded cantonment, housing the headquarters of 16 Corps.

Maj Akshay Girish Kumar, 31, from Bengaluru, was among the three officers martyred in the attack. His wife Sangeeta Ravindran is at Nagrota.

Sources said the heavily armed militants first entered 166 Field Regiment, 3 km from the headquarters of 16 Corps, which guards India’s border with Pakistan in the Jammu region.

“The terrorists forced their entry into the officers’ mess complex by throwing grenades and firing at the sentries. They entered two buildings, which were occupied by officers, families and men. This led to a hostage-like situation,” Indian Army’s Northern Command at Udhampur said in a statement.

The mess housed 12 army personnel, two women and two children. All of them were successfully rescued after a day-long operation in which elite commandos from 9 Para were deployed.

While an officer and three men were killed in the initial action, the rescue led to death of the second officer and two soldiers. The army will launch combing operations on Wednesday to find out if more militants are hiding in the adjoining forests.

In Delhi, Army Chief Gen Dalbir Singh briefed Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar about the strike, the third on the Indian armed forces establishment in 2016.

The artillery unit that the ultras penetrated is on the old Jammu-Srinagar highway at Nagrota. It is a massive military formation surrounded by forests. A river flows behind it.
Immediately after the attack, all schools in Nagrota tehsil were closed and traffic was suspended on the Jammu-Srinagar national highway, which runs through the area.

Jammu Deputy Commissioner Sarandeep Singh termed the decision to close schools as “a precautionary measure.”

Soon after the attack, security was beefed up on the Jammu-Pathankot national highway, which has witnessed a number of such attacks in the past few years.

Security was also reinforced in the capital cities of Jammu and Srinagar and in Katra, the base camp of the Mata Vaishnodevi cave shrine in Trikuta hills of Reasi district. Earlier, in a similar attack on September 18, four militants of the Jaish-e-Muhammad had stormed a brigade headquarters near the Line of Control in Uri, killing 19 soldiers and wounding 18 others.

Eleven days later, Indian commandos retaliated with surgical strikes on terror launch pads in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Maj Gosavi Kunal Mannadir, from Solapur in Maharashtra, is the second of three officers killed in the encounter. The army has not released the name of the third.

Others martyred are Havildar Sukhraj Singh, 32, from Punjab, Lance Naik Kadam Sambhaji Yeshwantro, 32, from Maharashtra, grenadier Raghvendra Singh, 28, from Rajasthan, and rifleman Asim Rai, 32, from Nepal.