Jammu: Army Chief General Bikram Singh returned to Delhi after being briefed by his Corps Commander at Nagrota on the ambush of an Indian patrol by Pakistani troops at the Line of Control in Poonch in which five soldiers were killed. General Singh, who was earlier scheduled to visit the area where the Indian soldiers were killed, was not able to go to either Poonch or Rajouri due to bad weather.
However, General Singh said that he will return to Poonch at the earliest opportunity and meet the Indian troops posted at the LoC. The Army Chief will brief Defence Minister AK Antony about the killings.
Earlier, General Singh and other senior Army officers paid tribute at Nagrota to the five soldiers killed by Pakistani troops and terrorists at the LoC.
An Indian patrol was attacked and fired upon well inside the Indian side of the LoC between Monday midnight and 1 am on Tuesday by at least 20 Pakistani troops and Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorists. According to the Army, 10-12 soldiers of 21 Bihar Regiment, which is deployed in the sector, along with a few from 14 Maratha Light Infantry were patrolling the border on Monday night when they were ambushed at Chakan da Bagh by the Pakistani intruders.
Defence Minister AK Antony said in Parliament that at least 20 heavily armed men dressed in the Pakistani Army uniform, entered the Indian side of the LoC and ambushed the soldiers near the Indian post Sarla late on Monday night. The Indian soldiers were on a border domination exercise when they were fired upon at around midnight. The attack took place between midnight and 1 am.
The attackers included Lashkar-e-Toiba Border Action Team (BAT) which has highly trained terrorists for carrying out such attacks with the help of Pakistani Army. The dead included four from the Bihar Regiment and one belonged to Maratha Light Infantry.
The martyred soldiers are Naik Prem Nath Singh, Lance Naik Shambhu Saran Rai, Sepoy Vijay Kumar Rai, Sepoy Raghunandan Prasad (all from 21 Bihar) and Naik Pundalik Mane of 14 Maratha Light Infantry.
####CNN-IBN’s Strategic Affairs Editor Surya Gangadharan on LoC killings in Poonch:
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