On the ground, little to cheer yet but Army admits wait and watch

'On the ground, little to cheer yet but Army admits wait and watch'

Muzamil Jaleel

Srinagar, June 3: Although the Army today claimed that a militant group could have crossed over in the Gulmarg sector of north Kashmir today, they believe it is too early to comment on the fallout of President Musharraf’s recent statement on the overall status of infiltration.

‘‘Today there is a possible contact in Gulmarg area,’’ Brigade General Staff (BGS) of Army’s 15 Corps, Brig R S Chhabra said. ‘‘A group of militants have infiltrated (through the Line of Control) in the south of Gulmarg,’’ he said, adding that details were still to arrive.

Maj. General A K Chopra, Chief of Staff, 15 Corps, also said: ‘‘We are yet to see any let-up in the movement (of militants) from across the Line of Control...We are still to see whether President Musharraf’s address has any impact or not.’’

The officers were talking to reporters at a function organised to welcome a group of Kashmiri school children, who had returned from an Army-sponsored ‘‘Bharat darshan tour.’’

The Border Security Force, however, says there is no change even as they too want to ‘‘wait and watch’’ to arrive at a conclusion.

‘‘There was an infiltration bid in Uri sector in the intervening night of May 24 and 25 which was succesfully averted,’’ said Inspector General, BSF, Baramulla, Naresh Mehra. ‘‘They rushed back to PoK after a shoot-out and in fact several among them were injured too. They even left a haversack which contained Pak-made anti-personnel mines,’’ he said.

Radio intercepts with the security forces, however, indicate little change in infiltration levels, although there is a decrease in radio communication of militants from PoK. ‘‘We have seen almost a 50 per cent decrease in radio communication of militant leaders from across in the past ten days.

However, it has increased many fold between militants within the Valley,’’ an officer said. The recent intercepts of the radio communication between militants suggest that a group of 20 foreign militants sneaked in and is hiding somewhere in Bandipore area while two groups of around ten militants with five porters is waiting to cross via Rajouri sector. ‘‘There are inputs that a bid is being made via Uri-Nowshehra sector,’’ the officer said.

Sources in the security agencies reveal that the communication centres of Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, Khyber and Tooba are active despite the dip in the flow of the messages. ‘‘Hadeed (one of the top Lashkar commanders and motivators) is in the Valley and he talks frequently with his men,’’ an officer said.

‘‘They have set up two suicide squads, one for Srinagar and another for Banihal for special missions. However, there is nothing known about the nature of the missions,’’ he said.

The BSF, meanwhile, today killed a top Jaish commander Riyaz Ahmad Siddique alias Abdullah Bhai during an encounter at Panju village in Pulwama. A resident of Nusrat Colony No. 6, Sukkur district of Pakistan, Riyaz was a district commander of the outfit.

A BSF spokesman claimed that he was also heading a Fidayeen group apart from co-ordinating the activities of Jaish and other militant outfits in Tral area. Catagorised as an ‘A’ class militant with a Rs 2-lakh reward on his head, Riyaz was killed after a fierce gun battle for several hours.