Indian Army decimate Pak post, three Pakistani snipers killed

NEW DELHI: A small team of Indian Army ’s “Ghatak” commandos surreptitiously crossed the Line of Control in the Rawlakot-Rakhchakri sector of Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir to kill at least three Pakistani soldiers and injure a few others on Monday evening, leading to a surge in the ongoing cross-border firings between the two countries.The limited “ tit-for-tat” operation was carried out to avenge the killing of four Indian soldiers, including Major Moharkar Prafulla Ambadas, by a Pakistani border action team (BAT) at Keri in Rajouri sector of J&K on Saturday afternoon.“`Jawabi karavaee’ (retaliatory action) was required. It was a localized, selective targeting raid around 250-300 meters inside PoK by five to six Ghatak commandos of an infantry battalion. Pakistan itself admitted three of its soldiers were killed in the operation, though intelligence inputs suggest the toll could be higher,” said a senior Army officer.The tactical operation, planned by the local battalion commander and approved by the brigade commander, cannot be compared to the “surgical strikes” against terror launch pads in PoK by Indian Para-Special Forces on September 29 last year.“The surgical strikes were much bigger in scope and simultaneously targeted four terror launch pads and two Pak Army posts co-located with them, both north and south of Pir Panjal over 2-km deep inside Pakistani territory. They were planned at the highest levels,” he said.Soon after four of its soldiers were killed at Keri on Saturday, the Army further stepped up its electronic and physical surveillance along several stretches of the LoC to “exploit any fleeting opportunity” for effective retaliation.It came at about 6pm on Monday when a patrol from the 59 Baluch unit, under the Pak army’s Rawlakot brigade, was first “hit and left stunned” by an IED (improvised explosive device) placed by the Ghatak commandos around 250-300 meters across the LoC.“The commandos, who were lying in wait, then opened fire to maximize the damage before swiftly returning to own side of the LoC, with our posts giving them covering fire. A Pak army sniper was also killed in Jhangar sector of Rajouri on Sunday,” said another officer.Monday’s raid was part of the almost daily war of attrition that continues all along the 778-km LoC, with the two sides engaging in fiery artillery-mortar duels and sniping operations as well as undertaking “shallow cross-LoC” raids after detecting vulnerable spots in each other’s deployment and patrolling patterns.The Indian Army has already recorded over 820 ceasefire violations by the Pak army along the LoC this year (the figure was just 228 in 2016, 152 in 2015), with 14 soldiers and 10 civilians being killed in them. The Army has lost another 17 soldiers during infiltration bids and “incidents” on the LoC, apart from 30 in intensive counter-insurgency operations that have killed over 210 terrorists in J&K this year.India, of course, has cranked up the pressure on the Pak Army with “pre-emptive and punitive fire assaults” to destroy locations across the LoC that aid infiltration attempts ever since two Indian soldiers were beheaded and another injured in a BAT operation in the Krishna Ghati sector in Poonch district on May 1.“Pakistan has suffered many more casualties than us…Their DGMO has made a couple of unscheduled calls over the hotline in the last two-three months to ask for lowering of the hostilities,” said an officer.But Indian DGMO Lt-Gen A K Bhatt last month told his Pakistan counterpart, Major General Sahir Shamshad Mirza, that there was a “disconnect” between his Army headquarters at Rawalpindi, which professed a desire for peace, and its troops on the ground along the LOC, who continue to resort to heavy firing and ceasefire violations without any provocation, as was earlier reported by TOI.The Army has made it clear it continue to take “all retaliatory measures and retain the right to punitively respond to any provocative acts of aggression” till Pakistan stops actively abetting cross-border terrorism and infiltration.