Yet to ascertain if casualties in J&K due to sniper attack, says Army Chief Gen Bipin Rawat

Suspected sniper attack by JeM terrorists has become a major cause of concern for security agencies in Kashmir Valley.

NEW DELHI: Army Chief General Bipin Rawat on Monday admitted that there were some casualties in the security forces in Jammu and Kashmir recently but stopped short of confirming that they were allegedly caused by sniper attack by terrorists. 

''We have had some casualties to our security personnel in J&K. Whether these have been done by alleged snipers or not, we are still studying, ''Army Chief General Bipin Rawat said in the national capital.

''We haven't yet recovered a sniper weapon,'''he added.

We have had some casualties to our security personnel in J&K. Whether these have been done by snipers or not, we are still studying. We haven't yet recovered a sniper weapon: Army Chief Bipin Rawat in Delhi pic.twitter.com/puNcubI5pd — ANI (@ANI) 29 October 2018

The remarks from General Rawat came days after it was reported that three Army personnel were allegedly killed in sniper attack by terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir.

Sniper attack by Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terrorists has emerged as a new cause of concern for security agencies in Kashmir Valley after the killing of three personnel since mid-September.

The incident has prompted the law enforcement agencies to re-calibrate their strategy to thwart such strikes by the Pakistan-based terrorist group.

The first such attack took place at Newa in Pulwama on September 18 when a CRPF personnel was injured, according to news agency PTI.

Security officials thought it to be a one-off strike till the recent spate of sniper attacks that claimed the lives of a Sashastra Seema Bal jawan and an Army personnel in Tral, and a CISF jawan in Nowgam.

Based on intelligence inputs, security agencies believe that at least two separate 'buddy' groups of the proscribed JeM comprising two terrorists each have entered Kashmir Valley in early September and have entrenched themselves in South Kashmir's Pulwama district with the help of some overground supporters of the outfit.

These terrorists, according to the officials, have been thoroughly trained by Pakistan's external snooping agency ISI for carrying out sniper attacks in Kashmir Valley and have been armed with M-4 carbines, used by the US-led allied forces in Afghanistan.

There is a possibility that these weapons may be part of the arms and ammunition captured by the Taliban, with whom the JeM cadre was fighting the allied forces in Afghanistan, security officials said. 

However, the officials said that the weapon was also being used by the special forces of the Pakistan Army.

In all the instances of sniper attacks, the terrorists used a nearby hillock to carry out strikes on a security force campus when unsuspecting jawans were using their mobile phones to talk to their family or friends.

The M-4 carbine is mounted with a telescope and the terrorists are using night vision devices to locate their potential targets, the officials said. 

The weapon can fire at its target up to 500-600 metres with precision.

The security agencies, including the army, CRPF and Jammu and Kashmir police, have already issued fresh guidelines to their jawans and officers located in camps in the militancy-hit areas.

Maintaining a silence over the change in tactics, the officials said that more combing operations would be carried out around the security camps.

They said that Jaish cadres were likely to carry out more such attacks in the future, but added that some modules had been identified and these cases were likely to be cracked soon.

The security agencies had been observing that while pushing the terrorists into Kashmir Valley from the Line of Control (LoC), the ISI meticulously planned to send in Jaish-e-Mohammed cadre along.

Those terrorists were armed with the best possible arsenal including bullets with steel core with the capability to pierce a static bulletproof bunker used during counter-terrorism operations, the officials said.

The first such incident was noticed on the New Year eve when JeM terrorists had carried out a suicide attack on a CRPF camp in Lethpora in South Kashmir. 

Five personnel of the para-military force were killed in the attack and one of them was hit by a bullet fatally despite using a static bullet-proof shield provided by the Army, officials said.

A thorough inquiry into the attack showed that the bullet fired by the terrorist from the assault AK rifle was of a steel core with the capability of piercing through the static bunkers used by security personnel during encounters with terrorists.

Generally, the AK bullets used in the armoury have a lead core covered with mild steel which cannot penetrate a bulletproof shield but after the December 31, 2017 encounter and subsequent findings, the rules of the proxy-war changed, the officials said.

A detailed analysis of the previous suicide attacks was carried out during which ballistic analysis of the terror attack on district police lines of Pulwama in South Kashmir in last August showed that 'steel core' bullets had been used by the terrorists in that encounter with security personnel. Eight security personnel had lost their lives in the terror strike.

The ammunition, according to the officials, is being modified from across the border with the help of Chinese technology of encasing the bullet with a hardened steel core.

All this comes at a time when India is trying hard to convince the United Nations for a ban on the JeM and designating its chief Maulana Masood Azhar as a global terrorist despite its efforts being blocked by China four times in past.

(With PTI inputs)