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| Opn flush out launched in Bandipore | | | Jammu, Aug 13: After a grenade blast in the Bandipore area of North Kashmir which killed three and injured 16 others, the security forces have launched a major operation to flush the militants out.
Three persons had died and sixteen others were injured when unidentified militants lobbed a hand grenade in Bandipora today.
Unidentified militants lobbed a Hand Grenade at Nowpora Chowk in Bandipora, today in which a total of nineteen people were injured. The injured were shifted to hospital, from where fourteen were referred to Srinagar.
Two years after militants established a base in the hills of the Shamsabari range for making forays into the rest of the Kashmir Valley, the army has finally launched operations to flush them out.
The base was being used by militants to make their way to south and central Kashmir, and troops engaged in counter-insurgency operations are now conducting operations against them and rigorously monitoring wireless communications between militant groups, official sources said.
The army acted only after state police and Central security agencies raised the issue of concentration of militants in Bandipore, a crucial mountainous area providing access from north Kashmir to other parts of the Kashmir Valley.
At a crucial meeting of the Unified Headquarters, the apex body managing security in Jammu and Kashmir, some of the security agencies alleged that the army's response to the concentration of militants in Bandipore was "confused and directionless", the sources said. This was refuted by the army.
"There was no willingness to go and attack despite the concentration of militants being confirmed through human and technical intelligence," a senior police officer said.
Bandipore town, which has the notorious reputation of being the breeding ground for "suicide attackers", is located on the banks of the Wullar, Asia's largest fresh water lake.
Terror groups like the Lashker-e-Taiba kept their cadres safe in well-established bases such as those in the Bandipore mountains. Since 2000, the LeT began establishing fortified hideouts in forests that served as "base stations" for terrorists who crossed the Line of Control, the sources said.
As the area was protected by an elaborate system of look-outs, LeT operatives began establishing weapon dumps and communication centres in the mountains, the sources said.
The base in Bandipore served as a centre from where operatives and explosives could be dispatched for operations like the 2004 attack on a rally in Srinagar addressed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the bombings in New Delhi on the eve of Diwali in 2005, the assassination of state minister Ghulam Nabi Lone and an operation targeting Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad.
All these attacks were carried out by local LeT cadres and were facilitated by Bandipore-based strike squads, the sources said.
There were complaints that army troops, who are part of Rashtriya Rifle's Kilo Force that is engaged in counter-insurgency operations in north Kashmir, did not respond adequately to the threats during 2004-06, the sources said.
This encouraged militants to establish fortified bunkers in the dense jungles of Bandipore. In all security-related meetings, the army claimed there was no concentration of militants in this region, they said.
The dreaded six-foot-six-inch-tall LeT militant Salahuddin alias Haider too made Bandipore his permanent base as it gave him easy access to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
It took the death of Lt Col V R Chauhan in an operation in the region to wake the army up to the situation in Bandipore though a well-planned operation was launched only after the area's commanding officer was removed and a new one brought in, the sources said.
Meanwhile, out of the injured in the Bandipore blast two persons namely Yawar Rafiq 17, S/O Mohammed Rafiq, R/O Bandipora and a labourer namely Shamlal, S/O Hari Chand, R/O Rajasthan succumbed on way to Srinagar while Ghulam Mohammed Lone, S/O Ghulam Hassan, R/O Bandipora died in SMHS Hospital.
Police has registered a case in this regard and has launched a manhunt to nab the culprits behind the incident.
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