The terror attack by armed Pakistani militants at the strategic frontline Air Force base in Punjab’s Pathankot increasingly points towards the making of this border state as the new theater of expanding terror strikes from across the border, after J&K.
Saturday’s attack by heavily armed militia, barely five months after the attack in Punjab’s border town Dinanagar in July last, has evidently proved Punjab’s growing susceptibility to such attacks. As infiltration from Pakistan becomes increasingly hard in chilling winter months in the insurgency-hit valley, the Punjab border zones are being tested for terror strikes, repeatedly.
Both Dinanagar and Pathankot terror strikes indicate a more or less similar modus operandi and a related pattern to terror attacks that have taken place in the insurgency-hit Jammu and Kashmir.
The involvement of terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad – a Pakistan-based outfit headed by Maulana Masood Azhar – has become increasingly evident in Saturday’s attack, said sources.
The terror strikes in Punjab in the last five months or so have both been fidayeen attacks. In both the strikes, the militants have attempted to majorly target defence installations and police outfits where they could engage with security forces for a longer duration and hope to put up a fight, albeit unsuccessfully. A breach in the “well calibrated” security apparatus took place. In both the attacks, the militants preferred the camouflage of Army fatigues.
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