Five car bombs recovered
Tribune News Service

SRINAGAR, June 9 — Security forces have foiled the militants’ plan to target top military and political leaders with the recovery of five powerful fabricated "car bombs’’ in south Kashmir after a brief encounter with militants.

"The car bombs were being designed to target key military, political and security forces personalities in the valley", Brig SK Raychaudhri of 8 Mountain Division stated here this morning.

He said that one of the car bombs had the capacity of carrying upto 80 kg of plastic explosive.

The other four car bombs contained shaped charges placed inside modified fuel tanks with plastic explosive. Shaped charges are capable of piercing armour plating. "If put to use, these bombs could have created devastation and havoc, which may have retarded the phenomenal success achieved in combating the sponsored insurgency in the valley", Brig SK Raychaudhri said.

The raid was conducted following a tip off early on Tuesday. The militants engaged the security forces in an encounter which lasted over an hour. The militants later fled leaving behind a huge quantity of explosive.

Five indigenously designed car bombs fabricated in fuel tanks along with one AK rifle and two AK magazines were recovered from the site, Brig Raychaudhri stated.

However, no one was arrested in the incident, and the location of the encounter and recoveries was not disclosed.

Intelligence for the operation had been collected over a period of three months with extensive intelligence inputs regarding the fabrication process of the car bombs militant tasking, financial arrangements and modus operandi of the ISI. With the breakthrough security forces may have brought down the curtain on adding a new dimension to militancy in the valley.

'Give befitting reply to Pak'
Tribune News Service

JAMMU, June 9 — The state unit of the Janata Party has urged the Government of India to give a befitting reply to Pakistan while pushing out infiltrators from the Kargil-Dras belt.

In a signed letter to the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee, the party president, Bhai Randeep Singh Parihar, said the problem of insurgency and infiltration in Jammu and Kashmir, including Kargil, "cannot be resolved by killing a few hundred Pakistan soldiers and mercenaries."

The party president said the problem could be solved by destroying training camps across the border so that Pakistan could not maintain its supply line to infiltrators.

Mr Parihar said India had tolerated the mischief by Pakistan for several years and time "has come when India should hit back and destroy the training centres and camps of the militants across the border."

He suggested that a delegation led by the Janata Party president, Dr Subramaniam Swamy, along with representatives of refugees from Kargil, Udhampur, Poonch Kashmir and Doda should be sent to the USA, China, the UK and France to explain to world leaders how Pakistan had been violating human rights.

Mr Parihar also urged the Prime Minister to ask the Defence Minister to exercise restraint because his recent utterances had harmed India's cause.

He said India should initiate strong measures against Pakistan because the USA as well as other world leaders had supported India's stand on Kargil.