Jawan killed, 3 injured in terrorist attack in J&K's Kulgam

In the first militant attack of 2021, an army man was killed and three others were injured in an IED blast that was planted inside a school near Shamsipora in south Kashmir’s Kulgam district on Wednesday.

Four personnel of a road opening party (ROP) of the Army’s 24 Rashtriya Rifles (RR) were injured as the IED went off when they passed by a school in Subhanpora locality of Shamsipora on Srinagar-Jammu national highway, officials said.

The injured soldiers were immediately shifted to 92 base hospital in Srinagar, where one of them succumbed to the injuries, they said and added the condition of one more injured army jawan is critical.

The school building also got damaged due to the IED blast that was planted inside the building, reports said. Immediately after the attack, the Army cordoned off the area and launched a manhunt to nab the attackers.

Earlier, defence spokesperson Colonel Rajesh Kalia in a statement said that militants lobbed a grenade on Army's ROP during the sanitisation drill at around 10:15 am in Shamsipora area of Kulgam.

He said that four soldiers sustained splinter injuries. “They were provided with first aid and have been evacuated to 92 base hospital. Further details will follow,” he said.

This was the first attack by the militants on security forces this year. In the first 26 days of January, no encounter between militants and security forces was reported in Kashmir. Seventeen militants and two security forces personnel were killed in eight encounters in January 2020.

Last year, 225 militants, including 46 commanders, and 60 security forces personnel, including 16 policemen were killed in over 103 anti-insurgency operations in Jammu and Kashmir while 38 civilians had also lost their lives in militancy-related incidents. As many as 157 militants were killed in Kashmir in 2019 while the number was 257 in 2018 which was the highest in a decade.