You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
India-Pakistan
Eight dead as Kashmir base raid ends after 36 hours
2018-01-02
[Al Jazeera] A marathon shootout at a paramilitary base in Indian-administered Kashmire has ended after almost 36 hours, with the killing of the last remaining gunman fighting off Indian security forces.

The fighting at the Lethpora-based camp, in southern Kashmire, left five Indian soldiers and three fighters dead, according to officials.

The attack began in the early hours of Sunday when three rebels stormed the vast base, located next to a police commando training centre.

Having taken the camps' guards by surprise, the attackers forced their way into the premises and took position inside the compound's buildings.

An intense shootout ensued, as hundreds of police, army and paramilitary soldiers rushed to the scene.

Shesh Paul Vaid, regional police chief, told Al Jazeera that the "operation ... concluded" on Monday afternoon, almost 36 hours later, after security forces recovered the body of the third attacker.

Two local fighters

Officials said one of the button men was a foreigner, while the other two were local residents from nearby villages, making them the first Kashmiris to carry out a "fidayeen" attack in seven years.

Those kind of assaults are typically suicide raids against official Indian installations, such as army and paramilitary camps. Heavily armed, the fighters usually engage in long stand-offs with the security forces until being killed.

Most of the "fidayeen" attacks have been carried out by foreigners affiliated with two Pakistain-based outfits - Lashkar-e-Taiba
...the Army of the Pure, an Ahl-e-Hadith terror organization founded by Hafiz Saeed. LeT masquerades behind the Jamaat-ud-Dawa facade within Pakistain and periodically blows things up and kills people in India. Despite the fact that it is banned, always an interesting concept in Pakistain, the organization remains an blatant tool and perhaps an arm of the ISI...
and Jaish-e-Mohammad
...literally Army of Mohammad, a Pak-based Deobandi terror group founded by Maulana Masood Azhar in 2000, after he split with the Harkat-ul-Mujaheddin. In 2002 the government of Pervez Musharraf banned the group, which changed its name to Khaddam ul-Islam and continued doing what it had been doing before without missing a beat...
, which also claimed the raid at the Lethpora paramilitary base

Police identified the two local rebels as 16-year-old Fardeen Ahmad Khanday and 24-year-old Manzoor Ahmad Baba. They were both residents of south Kashmire's Pulwama district.
Posted by:Fred

00:00