In a special media briefing on Tuesday, the Additional Directors General at Military Operations and the Intelligence directorates, gave casualty figures for both sides. While 17 soldiers and 32 civilians have been killed on the Indian side, the estimated figures for Pakistan are 78 and 104 respectively. Amongst those wounded are 85 Indian soldiers and civilians, while the Pakistani figures are 86 soldiers and 281 civilians.

The heavy Pakistani civilian casualties are largely on account of their bunkers and artillery gun positions being placed alongside or inside towns and villages. Any firing aimed at the gunpositions would result in some civilian positions, the officials said. These figures also include infiltrators killed while attempting to cross over, they added.

On the condition of the insurgency within the state, the officials said that the arc of militancy has crossed over to areas south of the Pir Panjal range. Killings of the innocent and the unarmed is a new phenomenon to cause demoralisation against the state. Most of the militant groups operating are foreign mercenary-dependent. As much as 70 per cent of the militants killed have been from Pakistan and Afghanistan, said the officials.

Since the eruption of the militancy in 1990, 7,310 militants have been killed, while 23,842 have been captured. Thus far a total of 1,774 have surrendered, and 20,767 weapons recovered, detailed figures released at the briefing stated.

70% ultras in J&K are foreigners

New Delhi: About 600-700 foreign mercenaries, mainly from Pakistan and Afghanistan, are operating in areas south of Pir Panjal in Jammuand Kashmir which have witnessed a steep rise in terrorist killings recently, official sources said here today.

The mercenaries constituting about 70 per cent of the total number of terrorists in the area, according to a rough estimate, are operating between Doda, Gool Gulabgarh area of Udhampur and Poonch and Rajouri districts of Jammu region. All these areas have witnessed a steep escalation in organised massacres by terrorists during the past few months.

While the mercenaries mainly belong to Lashkar-i-Toiba and Harkat-ul-Jehad-i-Islami (HUJI) in Poonch, in Rajouri they operate as Hizbul Mujahideen and Lashkar-i-Toiba. In Udhampur the Hizbul Mujahideen is active.

The sources said they had reports that about 72 terrorist training camps were operating in Pakistan including Pak Occupied Kashmir (POK). They however, declined comment on how to handle the training camps. ``You have already got the reply from the political leadership,'' a senior army official said when asked if the army favoured the `hotpursuit strategy'.