Terrorists killed in Handwara were Scouts for next group of 400 waiting Taliban infiltrators
Jaish-e-Mohammed, the UN designated terror group that targets Jammu and Kashmir, has readied 400 terrorists at its training camps in Afghanistan. They have been deployed with Taliban units for training before being sent to Kashmir valley.
The two terrorists killed in North Kashmir’s Handwara on Sunday were the advance party for the next group of infiltrators from Pakistan. One was a local and the other a Paki identified as LeT Commander Haider. The Army and central security agencies are now working out how many terrorists have managed to sneak in from across the border.
The two terrorists would received the infiltrators and arrange all logistics for them including transport, lodging and food.
Actually a group of five to six terrorists had managed to sneak in from Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, security forces had launched an operation Friday to track them down.
After a brief encounter on Friday, the group split. The two killed terrorists were traced to a cow shed of a house near the forest. Agencies also suspect that it is the same group of terrorists who killed three CRPF personnel in the attack at Kupwara Monday.
The Army and the central security agencies are working out the inputs and making a consolidated list of possible infiltration that has taken place.
North Kashmir is heating up this time around and that security forces have stepped up pressure, leading to desperation among terrorists. Usually, terrorists infiltrate and then spread out into South Kashmir.
Intelligence is being shared and a definite number is yet to be firmed up at the level of the Multi Agency Centre (MAC) of Indian intelligence.
Army sources maintained that while infiltration does take place despite multi-tier security at the LoC due to the terrain and weather, a definite number cannot be reached at.
Recently Afghan Government forces had discovered one of Jaish’s terror camps quite by chance last month when they were out on a counter-terrorist mission on April 12. In the two-day operation that gave security officials an insight into the extent of Jaish presence in Afghanistan, Afghan security officials had targeted a Jaish-e-Mohammed base set up in coordination with Taliban in the Ghorak-e-Mohmand area of Momand Dara, a district in the east of Nangarhar Province near the Durand Line across Torkham was demolished. At least 14 Jaish cadres were killed and a weapons depot destroyed.
Initial interrogation of the terrorists arrested in this operation, however, have led the Indian Army and the Indian security agencies to conclude that there were half-a-dozen more camps.
Counter-terror officials in Delhi and Kabul said the Jaish-e-Mohammed have already readied 400 fighters at training camps set up after the Taliban signed the 29 February pact with the US Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad.
“Jaish cadres have been deployed with Taliban units in areas between Khost to Jalalabad in east Afghanistan and also in areas close to the Pakistan border in Kandahar province,” a counter terror official in Kabul confirmed.
Officials said the synergy between the Taliban and the Jaish-e-Mohammed – some intel reports say the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba have also sent its cadres for training to the Jaish camps – is being anchored by Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence.
Zerar, one of the Jaish operatives arrested by the Afghan forces in follow-up action, has told interrogators that the training base busted by the forces were established to “train and equipp” the terrorists and were supported by Pakistan military personnel. Many of them, he said, had escaped in the fire cover provided by Pakistan military personnel to help them escape. Zerar, identified as a resident of Pakistan capital Islamabad, was among them. He was arrested three days later, on April 15.
The terror group founded by Maulana Masood Azhar is being run by his younger brother Mufti Abdul Rauf Asghar since Masood Azhar, who was designated as a global terrorist by the United Nations last year, has been terminally ill.
Diplomats in Kabul say Masood Azhar’s elder brother, Ibrahim Azhar, has been spotted in Ghazni city in central Afghanistan, possibly in context of the effort to deepen ties with the Taliban.
The training camps remain under overall charge of Mufti Asghar Kashmiri, commander of Jaish’s Kashmir operations who has been spotted around terrorist launch pads in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
The Afghan war veteran Mufti Asghar Kashmiri, who was once with the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, oversees the operational aspects of the infiltration from Leepa valley that leads to Kupwara in north Kashmir and has been the favoured route for terrorists over the last few weeks.
So this is the resean why Handwara has suddenly become very active this summer. Any way all the terrorist dogs will be killed and sent to hell within no time of entering India.
