Pampore encounter: Militants may have done recce of the area..

Captain Tushar Mahajan's mother breaks down on her son's coffin in Udhampur on Monday


The 48-hour long fierce gunfight between the Army and three foreigners hiding in a government building in Pampore ended with the death of the foreigners.
The Army said all the three militants, in the multi-storeyed Entrepreneurship Development Institute (EDI) at Pampore in Pulwama district, about 15 km south of Srinagar city, belonged to a Fidayeen squad. They also suspect that the militants carried out a recce of the area before carrying out the attack.
"A large cache of arms and ammunition have been recovered. Building has to be secured and sanitised and this process is going on," the General Officer Commanding Victor Force (GOC), Arvind Dutta, told reporters after the encounter.
The Victor Force is the army's counter insurgency in south Kashmir.
The GOC dismissed any criticism that the operation took longer than expected stating that it is a matter of perception. He said the army moved cautiously to eliminate the militants as the building they were hiding in had plenty of rooms.
"There was large space for hiding. We had no time limits. We wanted to move cautiously to eliminate them," Dutta said adding that, "If army had not exercised restraint, there would have been collateral damage."
Speaking about the militants he said that, "Their identities are not known yet and they are being checked," but went on to add that they were all foreigners.
"The foreign militants don't usually do a recce of the area before striking. However, this possibility cannot be ruled out in this case," Dutta added.
The GOC said that they had not received any specific intelligence inputs about the strike.
In the operation the army lost three men including two officers, while two CRPF personnel were killed.
Early on Sunday morning 23-year-old Captain Pawan Kumar, who was the head of the Para Special Force team that carried out the operation, sustained injuries while entering the building. He was moved to the Army's 92 base hospital Badamibagh, where he succumbed to his injuries.
The army also lost 21-year-old Captain Tushar Mahajan and 32-year-old Lance Naik Om Prakash who were both instrumental in clearing a major portion of the EDI building.
The army said Captain Tushar Mahajan and Lance Naik Om Prakash were members of the team that had launched the operation against the militants on Sunday.
On Saturday afternoon at about 3:30 pm the militants attacked a CRPF convoy in which 11 personnel were wounded. Of the 11, two died from their injuries.
A civilian, an employee at EDI, was caught in the crossfire between militants and the paramilitary troopers during the initial attack. Police and security forces also evacuated more than 100 people, including students and EDI employees, from the building before engaging the militants.