Majid Jahangir

Srinagar, February 22

The nearly 48-hour-long encounter ended today as security forces gunned down all three highly trained foreign militants who were holed up inside a multi-storey government building on the outskirts of the city.The militants, suspected to from the Lashkar-e-Toiba, were killed by special forces of the Army after an intense gunfight on the third floor of the Jammu and Kashmir Entrepreneurship Development Institute (JKEDI) building at Sempora, 15 km from here, on the Srinagar-Jammu highway.The General Officer Commanding of Victor Force, Maj Gen Arvind Dutta, said all three slain militants were foreigners. “They were foreign terrorists and we are yet to identify them,” said Maj Gen Arvind Dutta, General Officer Commanding of Victor Force.“A lot of arms and war-like ammunition have been recovered from them. The process of sanitising the building is under way,” he said. With the killing of three militants, the death toll in the gunfight that erupted on Saturday afternoon reached nine.Three para commandos, including Capt Pawan Kumar and Capt Tushar Mahajan, two CRPF men and a civilian were also killed in the gunfight. Over a dozen security men were injured in the gunfight, which was the first major attack in Srinagar and its outskirts in the past six years.Director General of Police K Rajendra Kumar said the police were trying to establish the identity of the militants. “We are ascertaining their identity,” he told The Tribune.The Army said the militants were at an advantage and were watching the movement of security forces. “The huge building had 44 rooms, not counting smaller rooms and toilets, and an area of 10,000 square feet. The terrorists had a big opportunity to hide in the building,” Maj Gen Dutta said.Sources said the final assault was launched this morning in the machine room of the building, where the militants were cornered by para commandos.The Army had to take every inch of the building cautiously since Sunday evening after militants took shelter in it.  There was heavy exchange of fire intermittently till the gunfight ended.  The building caught fire during the gunfight and the flames later subsided.There were protests in many areas of Pampore as people tried to march towards the encounter site. There were reports of clashes in the area, in which four persons received injuries.The police said it would take time to sanitise the entire JKEDI building and they were ensuring that the militants had not laid any booby trap.

Terrorists had the advantage

Tribune News Service

Udhampur/Jammu, February 22

The Pampore encounter, that concluded after more than 48 hours of intermittent but fierce gunfight, had its own peculiarities never seen before in Kashmir in the past 26 years.Three foreign terrorists were killed in the encounter, in which Capt Tushar Mahajan, Capt Pawan Kumar and Lance Naik Om Prakash also laid down their life.The encounter started at 3.30 pm on Saturday when three heavily armed terrorists stormed the four-storey Jammu and Kashmir Entrepreneur Development Institute (JKEDI) building after ambushing a CRPF convoy, killing two personnel and injuring several others, with a “sinister design” to provoke forces and cause collateral damage.The Army ferried 120 civilians out of the premises in bullet-proof vehicles. Earlier, terrorists had been involved in fierce encounters either in private houses or forest areas, where they did not have much of an advantage of keeping an eye on the movement of soldiers.The JKEDI is a vast complex with a plinth area of 10,000 square feet, according to Maj Gen Arvind Dutta, General Officer Commanding of the Victor Force, headquartered at Awantipora.It is a four-storey building with a basement and restaurant on top. The structure is such that it has many corners which appear a perfect hiding place for terrorists.They were positioned at places in the 44-room building where they could see Army movement while the soldiers did not have that advantage, claimed a source in the Northern Command.The Army pressed used bullet-proof vehicles to evacuate 120 civilians. It was a successful operation, said Maj Gen Dutta. He said a huge cache of arms and ammunition and war-like stores were recovered.All three terrorists were from across the border and it was not known whether or not they had carried out any recce, the source added.The building had been constructed using modern technology and had vast space for employees and trainees who could become future entrepreneurs.

Militants had come prepared for a long fight: Eyewitnesses

Tribune News Service,Srinagar, February 22

Security agencies are yet to ascertain whether the three militants killed in the Pampore attack were part of the fidayeen group.Meanwhile, eyewitness accounts say the militants had come prepared to occupy the J&K Entrepreneurship Development Institute building after ambushing a CRPF convoy on Saturday.Eyewitnesses trapped inside the EDI complex say the militants despite having enough time to escape did not flee and chose to stay put inside the building, indicating its was a “chosen target”.The militants were on a fidayeen (suicide) mission can be gauged from the fact that they (militants) asked the EDI employees and trainee students to leave their phones behind before asking them to leave the building quickly.Even when some of the trapped people told the militants, believed to be three in number, that they could escape from the building, the militants replied that that they were not leaving and were “there to fight”.“I was sitting in a room on the ground floor when I heard gunshots. Then the window panes were shattered as bullets were fired into the room. I and my colleagues immediately lay on the ground and slowly crawled to the adjacent room,” said Atif, a trainee from Srinagar.“As we were trying to figure out what was happening, three guys holding AK rifles came inside the room and asked us to leave immediately. But when someone asked them to escape, the militants said they were not leaving the building,” he said.The eyewitness said two militants were wearing pheran while the third one was wearing a waist coat. “They spoke in Urdu. They were well armed and appeared to have come prepared for a long fight,” he said.Ishfaq Mir, a senior employee at the J&K Entrepreneurship Development Institute, was on the second floor when the first shot was fired by the militants.“As I was going down to the first floor, I saw three armed men asking people to leave the building immediately. Two gunmen were asking the employees and trainees to leave their cellphones behind before leaving the building,” Mir said, adding that the militants had come “prepared”.