Even as some Indian politicos are raising questions about the authenticity of surgical strikes, graphic details have emerged of Indian Army's operation last week
Indian Border Security Force (BSF) soldiers take up positions at an outpost along a fence at the India-Pakistan border in R.S Pora south-west of Jammu on October 2, 2016. Pic/AFP
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Even as some Indian politicos are raising questions about the authenticity of surgical strikes, graphic details have emerged of Indian Army’s operation last week.
Eyewitnesses living across the Line of Control (LoC) have provided The Indian Express with details of the strikes on terrorists’ staging posts. They revealed to the paper that bodies of those killed in the clashes were loaded onto trucks for secret burials. Eyewitnesses further stated that makeshift buildings that housed terrorists were destroyed before the Army headed across the LoC.
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The Indian Express contacted five eyewitnesses through their kin living on the Indian side of the LoC and questions were sent to them using a commercially available encrypted chat system. Two of the eyewitnesses visited Dudhnial, a small hamlet, which is some 4 km across the LoC from India’s nearest forward post, Gulab. One of them saw a gutted building across the Al-Haawi bridge from the hamlet’s main bazaar.
Another eyewitness added that around five bodies were loaded on to a truck early next morning, and perhaps transported to the nearest major Lashkar camp at Chalhana, across the Neelum river from Teetwal, on the Indian side of the LoC. This was conveyed to the eyewitness by the local.
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One more eyewitness told Indian Express that, during Friday prayers at a Lashkar-affiliated mosque in Chalhana, a cleric vowing was taken to avenge deaths of the men killed in the surgical strikes. The Lashkar men gathered there were blaming the Pakistan Army for failing to defend the border, and said they would give India an answer it would never forget.
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