Days earlier, a JCO and four jawans were killed in an encounter with heavily armed militants in Jammu and Kashmir’s dense forests.
On Friday, October 15, 2021, two Army personnel, including a junior commissioned officer (JCO), were killed in combat with terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch district.
A spokesperson for the defense department reports that a JCO and a jawan suffered critical injuries during a counter-terrorism operation in the Nar Khas forest area of the Mendhar sub-division on Thursday evening. In the end, they both succumbed to their injuries.
He added that the operation is ongoing.
The spokesperson has reported that while the jawan’s body has arrived from the area, the JCO has not.
His comments were about retrieving the body, which is difficult and dangerous due to the area’s natural terrain and dense forest.
According to the Jammu and Kashmir police, terrorists have been present in Poonch for the last two to three months, including at the time of a recent attack on security forces there. Five Army personnel, including JCOs, were killed.
DIG Rajouri-Poonch, Vivek Gupta, told reporters that terrorists are concentrated only in one part of the district.
Two or three months have passed since the group arrived in the area, he said.
Incidents of terrorism are increasing
Since January, several counter-terrorism operations and encounters have occurred in Rajouri and Poonch, two border districts. A terrorist attack occurred in the village of Bimber Gali of Mendhar tehsil, Poonch. Located between Poonch and Rajouri, the area is densely forested.
An encounter between security forces and terrorists in the Surankot area of Poonch on October 11 led to the death of five Army personnel, including a JCO.
Security forces killed a terrorist unidentified after being spotted in upper Manjakote in Rajouri on September 12.
One of the JCOs died in a terrorist encounter in the Thanamandi area of Rajouri on August 19.
While counter-terrorism operations continue in Rajouri and Poonch districts, the civilian vehicular movement has halted as a precautionary measure.
BSF 172 members and the particular operations group (SoG) successfully recovered an AK-47, three wireless sets, and ammunition from a forest area in north Kashmir’s Kupwara district evening.
An operation undertaken jointly by the BSF and police was conducted in Kralpora’s Reshigund Check forest area in response to specific information. According to a police official, the police searched the scene and found an AK-47 (damaged), four magazines, 720 rounds, five wireless sets, eight detonators, three Chinese grenades, and a compass.
Tuesday, after five army personnel died in an encounter with terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir, the Shiv Sena demanded that revenge exceed five times the death toll.
Saamana, the Shiv Sena mouthpiece, claimed that Pakistan sympathizers had been encouraged since the nullification of Article 370, which stripped Jammu and Kashmir of its special rights.
Military groups are purging the Valley of people of different faiths, the report said.
Effect:
There were a series of civilian killings in Kashmir between October 2, 2021, and October 7, 2021. Two of the seven victims are Kashmiri Pandits, three are Muslims, one is a Sikh, and one is nonlocal.
 A string of recent targeted killings of civilians in Kashmir has sparked fear among minority communities in the Valley. The situation resulted in comparisons to the 1990s when Kashmiri Pandits left the Valley.
Some families have received tight security in Kashmir, and they have been instructed not to venture out after dark. The majority of minority shops and business establishments in Srinagar have begun closing as soon as dusk falls.
There are fears that Taliban 2.0 could spill over into Kashmir. Pakistan appears to be leveraging its influence over the Taliban to stay afloat in Afghanistan, where the US is no longer in control, and redistributing resources to shore up militancy in Kashmir.
There is also talk about the Taliban in the Valley and how Afghanistan will impact Kashmir. People talk about how a technologically and numerically inferior fighter force beat the US in passenger vehicles or salons.
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