NEW DELHI, Jan 13: A cordon-and-search operation was underway in Poonch district of Jammu and Kashmir on Saturday to track down terrorists who had fired on an army convoy on Friday, officials said. There was no casualty in the attack on the convoy.
Troops are using sniffer dogs and aerial surveillance to comb the area, which has dense forest, the officials said. The vehicles that came under attack near Krishna Ghati in Poonch sector on Friday evening were carrying security personnel back to a camp. No one was injured in the attack and the commanding officer as well as other Army personnel were safe, officials said.
A similar ambush on Army vehicles took place in Poonch’s Dhatya Morh in the Dera Ki Gali area on December 21. Four Army personnel were killed in the attack. Rajouri and Poonch districts have witnessed targeted attacks by terrorists on the Army and civilians in the recent past, they said.
Nineteen soldiers were killed in four terrorist attacks in Rajouri and Poonch in 2023. Security forces killed more than 30 terrorists in the two districts — along the Line of Control (LoC) as well as in the hinterland — last year.
(Manas Dasgupta)