Troops foil attack on Siachen post
Six intruders shot dead
Tribune News Service and agencies

SRINAGAR, Oct 27 — At least six Pakistani soldiers were killed when Indian troops foiled their attempt, second within in a week, to capture an Indian forward post in the Siachen area today.

"Pakistani troops made an attempt at capturing the post at the glacier making use of bad visibility due to low clouds. The attack was foiled by an alert sentry who noticed the movement about 500 metres away from the post and quickly alerted the post", a defence spokesman said here. The attack came at about 1 am and was neutralised by the Army, the spokesman added.

Lt Gen Krishan Pal, Corps Commander, 15 Corps, told TNS that naik Basharat Hussain spotted 15 Pak troops coming towards the (actual ground position line) who were getting ready to attack the post. The alert naik alerted the troops and to foil the attempts of the Pak troops "we brought down artillery fire, machine gun fire and mortar fire". Basharat Hussain saw the bodies of two men being dragged away, the General said.

He said "We also suspect that three more persons have died in our firing". There was no damage on the Army due to Pak firing. "The Pak troops fired 114 rounds of 120mm mortar in the instant retaliatory fire, which shows that they were ready to attack our post," he said.

The Pakistani attempt to capture the post located at an altitude of 18,000 feet at the glacier comes close on the heels of the visit of Pakistani Army chief General Parvez Musharref to Siachen on October 22.

The previous attempt on October 18 was a multi-directional attack on a tactically important Indian post in Siachen which too was foiled by the Indian troops.

The spokesman said Pakistan had been attempting to capture some of the Indian posts in the glacier as their dominating height provided good observation facility.

Last year too, Pakistani troops had made three unsuccessful attempts to capture Indian posts at Siachen.

The Army on Tuesday foiled an infiltration bid by a group of militants along the Line of Control (LoC) in Poonch district and recovered a huge cache of arms, defence sources said in Jammu.

The troops challenged the militants trying to sneak in at the Sawjia area and forced them to retreat towards the occupied Kashmir, they said.

During searches in the area, army personnel recovered 16 high power rockets, 10 60 mm mortar bombs and some gadgets used in improvised explosive devices.

Meanwhile, militants kidnapped Gulam Hussain from his house in the Behraugali area of Poonch district last night, the sources said.

Meanwhile, the security forces shot dead three militants, arrested five others and recovered a huge cache of arms and ammunition during anti-militant operations in Kashmir, where normal life was disrupted following a bandh call by the Hurriyat Conference on Tuesday.

A militant surrendered in Doda district today, raising the number of those surrendered in the past three days to 13, an official spokesman said today.

The militant laid down arms before the security forces at Bhatta village and handed over a rifle, a wireless set and a hand grenade.

While 11 militants, eight of them belonging to the Harkat-ul-Jehadi Islami, two to a Hizb-ul-Mujahideen and another to Harkat-ul-Ansar surrendered yesterday, a militant of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen gave himself up a day earlier.
The spokesman said three militants, one of them identified as Bashir Ahmad Dar alias ‘Zahid’ were killed in two separate encounters in Baramulla district last night.

He said five militants — three from Srinagar and two from Doda — were arrested by the security forces along with a big cache of arms and ammunition, today.

The security forces also recovered a RPG rocket and a mortar bomb from an abandoned militant hideout at Sayapora in Anantnag district, last night.

Life in Srinagar and all major towns of the valley went out of gear as a result of a general strike called by the Hurriyat Conference.