The Indian Army said rifleman Nishant Malik, who was injured in a ‘fidayeen’ attack carried out by two terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir’s Rajouri on Thursday morning, succumbed to his injuries, taking the total security forces’ casualties to four.
Earlier, three Indian Army personnel had succumbed to injuries received while fighting the two terrorists. Subedar Rajendra Prasad, rifleman Manoj Kumar and rifleman Lakshmanan D made the supreme sacrifice during the operation.
The army, however, foiled a suicide bomb attack on its base and eliminated both the terrorists.
The army said the firefight was sparked after sentries detected suspicious persons approaching the camp taking advantage of the inclement weather and dense foliage around 40 km from the Line of Control (LoC), the de facto border between India and Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir.
“The sentries challenged the two terrorists who threw grenade while attempting to gain entry inside the post. …alert troops cordoned the area and engaged them in a firefight thereby pinning them. In the ensuing encounter, two terrorists were neutralised,” it said in a statement. It added six soldiers were injured and three of them later succumbed to their injuries.
The attack was the first such assault in the region since February 2018 when terrorists attacked an army camp at Sunjuwan in Jammu and left six soldiers and one civilian dead. In 2016, 19 soldiers were killed in a similar attack on an army brigade headquarters near Uri along the LoC. It was the deadliest such attack in the region in two decades and prompted a cross-border retaliation.
