As India conducted its first surgical strikes across the loC early on Thursday, the Para Special Forces of the Army have come into spotlight.
The Special Forces are units under the direct command of the military and specially organised, highly trained and equipped to conduct swift pin-pointed strikes and hit strategic targets within an enemy or hostile territory. Surgical strikes are Intelligence-based precision attacks on strategic targets inside a hostile territory without incurring or inflicting collateral damage.
The Para commandos could count only a few bodies of the slain jehadis while many others were shredded to bits due to use of weapons like RPO flame throwers, grenade launchers and Carl Gustav among others, sources said.
The movement of the terrorists was tracked through drones and communication satellites and the same was shared with the PMO. An estimated 12 jehadis were there inside each launching pad and the Para commandos killed the sentries guarding such pads by using silencer-fitted sniper rifles following which the jehadis inside were killed, the sources said.
For their part, the Ghatak platoons of the Bihar and Dogra Regiment, who too were part of the operations, opened rapid fire on three launch pads closer to the loC (600 mt to 1.2 km). Sources said six to 12 Pakistan Army personnel manning these staging posts would have been killed through artillery firing. The Ghataks then crossed the loC and killed smaller squad of the fidayeens. While the operations were coming to a close, two truck loads of SSG Border Action Teams and Pak Rangers were sent in for reinforcements but when they arrived and saw the volume of fire they ran, they said. The Ghataks then covered the Paras’ egress back.
The SF unit was created in 1965 by the Indian Army when it used to be a small ad hoc force comprising volunteers from infantry units and operated along and behind enemy lines during the Indo-Pak war that year. later, the SF was organised into Para commando units which were first deployed in the Indo-Pak war in 1971. The Para units also took part in the 1984 Operation Blue Star. They were deployed in Sri lanka in the eighties in the operation against lTTE, Operation Cactusin in 1988 in Maldives and Kargil War in 1999.
Even before conducting the surgical strike against the jehadis on Thursday, the Government had been keeping two units of the Army's special forces-4 Para and 9 Para—based in Jammu & Kashmir on standby in the wake of the Uri terror attack.
The retaliatory strike comes amid escalating tension between India and Pakistan in the wake of yet another terror attack exported by Pakistan through the jehadi affiliate Jaish-e-Mohammad whose fidayeens burnt alive 18 soldiers and injured about 30 Indian Army personnel in a pre-dawn attack at a Battalion headquarters at the Uri town near the line of Control in Jammu & Kashmir on September 18.
One Para comprises 1,000 personnel including highly trained commandos and the equipment includes a host of latest weaponry and gadgets including high altitude parachutes, underwater scooters and state-of-the art communication sets among others. The Army has raised 10 Para units for conducting special operations.
Following the Uri attack, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had assured the nation that "this attack will not go unpunished." Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar had subsequently said the PM's statement will not remain just a statement indicating impending action against the terror groups.
