In a stark reminder to the Pulwama terror attack on security personnel in February 2019 ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, an Indian Air Force (IAF) vehicle convoy was attacked in the similar fashion by terrorists in the Poonch district of Jammu and Kashmir late Saturday evening in which one soldier was killed and four seriously injured.
The attack occurred near Shashidhar when the convoy vehicles were moving towards Sanai Top in the district's Surankote area.
The local military units launched cordon and search operations to capture the terrorists behind the strike, the IAF statement read.
This is the ninth major attack on security personnel since October 2021 in the region including this which comes right in the midst of 2024 General Elections.
A similar terrorist strike took place in the Poonch district on December 21, 2023. Four Army personnel sacrificed their lives and three others received critical injuries after their vehicles were ambushed by the hiding foreign terrorists in the general area of Dera ki Gali in the Poonch district.
Five Indian Army personnel including two officers were "killed in action" in the Kalakote forest area of Rajouri on November 22.
Meanwhile, the audacious strike has once again raised question marks as none of the terrorists were neutralised.
The attack comes three weeks ahead of polling in Anantnag-Rajouri Lok Sabha constituency.
Poonch is part of Anantnag-Rajouri parliamentary constituency which is going to polls in the sixth phase on May 25.
The border district of Poonch along with adjoining Rajouri has witnessed some of the major terrorist attacks over the past two years, signalling return of terror activities to the region, which was once cleared of terrorism and remained peaceful between 2003 and 2021.
The officials said five security personnel were injured, two of them critically, when terrorists opened fire on two vehicles, including one belonging to the IAF, near Shashidhar in the evening.
The vehicles were moving towards nearby Sanai Top in the district's Surankote area, they said, suspecting the involvement of the same group of terrorists who carried out an ambush on the troops in adjoining Bufliaz on December 21 last year, that left four soldiers dead and three others injured.
The Army truck bore the major brunt of the firing by the terrorists who were armed with AK assault rifles and are believed to have fled into the nearby forests, the officials said.
Sources said reinforcements from the Army and police have been rushed to the area and a massive search and cordon operation was launched to track down and neutralise the terrorists.
Police assisted by paramilitary forces carried out searches in Poonch town since Friday following inputs about movement of suspected persons. However, no one was arrested during the operation, said officials.
The latest incident in the Pir Panjal region followed the killing of a Government employee Mohd Razaq, brother of an Army personnel, by terrorists at village Kunda Top in Rajouri's Shahdra area on April 22 and a village defence guard Mohd Sharief in Basantgarh area of Udhampur on April 28.
Police have released pictures of two Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorists, including suspected Pakistani national Abu Hamza, involved in the murder of Razaq and announced a cash reward of Rs 10 lakh on his head.
The Bufliaz ambush in December last year came weeks after a major gunfight in the Dharmsal belt of Bajimaal forest in Rajouri that left five Army personnel, including
two captains, dead a month earlier.
Two terrorists, including a top commander of LeT identified as Quari, were also killed in the two-day long gunfight. Quari was said to be the mastermind behind several attacks, including the killing of 10 civilians and five Army personnel in the district.
The stretch between Dhera Ki Gali and Bufliaz on the boundary of Rajouri and Poonch is densely forested and leads to Chamrer forest and then Bhata Dhurian forest, where five soldiers were killed in an ambush on an Army vehicle on April 20 last year.
In May last year, five more Army personnel were killed and a major-rank officer was injured in Chamrer forest during an anti-terrorist operation. A foreign terrorist was also killed in the operation.
In 2022, five Army personnel were killed when terrorists carried out a suicide attack on their camp at Pargal in Darhal area of Rajouri district. Both the terrorists involved in the attack were eliminated.
In 2021, nine soldiers were killed in two separate attacks by terrorists in the forested region. While five Army personnel, including a junior commissioned officer (JCO), were killed on October 11 in Chamrer, a JCO and three soldiers were killed on October 14 in a nearby forest.
On February 14, 2019, a terror attack was carried out in Pulwama by a suicide bomber resulting in the death of 40 CRPF personnel. The suicide bomber, identified as Jaish-e-Mohammad's Adil Ahmed Dar, rammed his vehicle into a bus with the CRPF convoy.
World body United Nations and countries from across the globe, including the US, Russia, Australia, France, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, have condemned the brutal Pulwama terror attack, and extended their support to India in the fight against terrorism.
