A highly-decorated colonel of the Indian Army was among five security personnel killed during more than 12-hour operation to flush terrorists out of a house in Handwara in north Kashmir, officials said on Sunday.
The security men were able to kill two terrorists in Changimulla village in Handwara and rescue the civilians but at the cost of their own lives.
The personnel killed in action are the commanding officer (a colonel) of the army’s 21 Rashtriya Rifles battalion, a major, two soldiers and a sub-inspector of the Jammu and Kashmir Police.
The colonel, who leaves behind his wife and a 12-year-old daughter, had been decorated twice in the past for bravery in counter-terrorism operations, said one of the officials cited above.
The army-police joint operation was launched on Saturday afternoon to rescue the civilians who had been taken hostage by the terrorists inside a house.
In a statement issued on Sunday, the army said the joint operation was launched on the basis of intelligence that terrorists were holding civilian hostages at Changimulla.
“A team comprising five army and J&K Police personnel entered the target area occupied by the terrorists to evacuate the civilians. The team entered the target area and successfully extricated the civilians,” the statement said.
The statement added, “However, during the process, the team was subjected to heavy volume of fire by the terrorists. In the ensuing firefight, two terrorists were eliminated and the team of five… comprising two army officers, two soldiers and one police sub-inspector attained martyrdom.”
This comes around a month after five commandos belonging to an elite unit were killed in action along the Line of Control in Kashmir’s Keran sector during an intense close-quarter battle with an equal number of terrorist infiltrators who were all eliminated.
