51 soldiers dead in 80 days post-surgical strikes

New Delhi: In the last 80 days since the September 29 surgical strikes, about 51 soldiers of the Indian Army and the border security forces, including one from SSB, have lost their lives in militant attacks and cross-border firing by the Pakistani Army in Jammu and Kashmir.

The figures, arrived at by studying a compilation made by South Asian Terrorism Portal, a leading website dedicated to counter terrorism analysis, implied that every week more than four Indian soldiers are being killed in the area.

While the most recent militant attack took place on Saturday when three Army jawans were killed in an ambush on an Army convoy in Pampore, the last major attack took place on November 29 in Nagrota where seven soldiers, including two Army Majors, were killed.

In a tactical shift towards militants operating from across the LoC and to strike a “hard state” image, commandos from India’s elite special forces had carried out several coordinated and incisive strikes on militant launch pads across the LoC, inflicting huge damage in the intervening night of September 28-29.

This was also in response to a brazen attack on September 18 by Pakistani Army-backed militants on an Army base in J&K’s Uri that killed 19 soldiers.

In 2016, up to December 18, the number of personnel killed stood at more than 80 with more than 210 injured. This is by far the highest casualty number among security forces in the last three years. Last year, the number of personnel killed in J&K stood at 39. In 2014 it was 47 while it was 53 in 2013.

Till date, 6,275 personnel have been killed in terrorist violence in J&K in the last 28 years with the peak recorded in 2000 when 638 were killed. During this 28-year period, 23,131 militants have been killed.