Soldier killed, 2 injured in LoC ambush in Jammu

One soldier of Maratha Light Infantry was killed and two others sustained injuries in an ambush along the LoC in Akhnoor sector of Jammu on Sunday.

Official sources told The Hindu that Sepoy Bikhale of 2-Maratha Light Infantry died on the spot when the patrolling party came under attack. An IED explosion, followed by volleys of gunfire, met a quick response from the Indian Army. It was not known whether the retaliation caused any damage to the other side or not.

After the firing subsided, the injured soldiers — head constable Vinod Kumar and Lance Naik Amol Kumar — were evacuated and airlifted to a military hospital at the Northern Command headquarters of Udhampur.

“It looked like last year’s strike by the Pakistan Army’s BAT (Border Action Team) in which their soldiers and terrorist commandos killed five of our jawans in Poonch, but we are still making an assessment of the situation”, an Army official in Jammu said. He said that the ambush had been laid about 60 km from the winter capital of Jammu where the International Border ends and the LoC starts.

Some Army officials played it down as a routine action of the Pakistani troops ahead of pushing terrorists in an infiltration attempt. They said that on Sunday itself a similar attempt of infiltration was foiled by the Indian Army in Bhimber Gali sector of Poonch district. They said it seemed to be the fourth such incident in the last few days. However, no fatal casualty took place in the first three strikes.

None in the Nagrota- based Headquarters of 16 Corps or the Northern Command headquarters of Udhampur explained why the incident, that happened on Sunday at a time when the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government had resigned and BJP leader Narendra Modi was about to take over as the new Prime Minister of India, had not been reported for over 12 hours.