Indian Army calls off Mendhar operation

JAMMU - A week after it launched an operation against terrorists in the Beri Rakh forests in Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch district, the Indian Army Monday evening called it off, with two of the terrorists still untraced. A major was killed in the operation.

Only two of the four terrorists believed to be hiding in the forests in Mendhar were killed in the operation which started on the night of July 13.

The army lost a major, while 11 others, including a colonel and another major, were injured.

With no contact with the terrorists since Saturday morning and extensive searches in the dense forests of Beri Rakh, 230 km from here, yielding nothing, the army Monday evening decided to call off the operation, said a senior army officer without elaborating on the fate of the two other terrorists.

“We really don’t know what happened to them,” he told IANS on condition of anonymity.

The calling off of the seven-day-long operation is seen as an embarrassment for the security forces, which despite having laid a cordon around the forests and having mobilised more troops from other camps, fell to the vulnerabilities of the terrain.