The successful surgical strike against militants in thick jungles of Onzia area of Myanmar on Tuesday morning was carried out by a 70-member team of elite Special Forces of the Indian Army. The cross-border raid on two separate camps there lasted for just 30 minutes involving brief gunfight between the militants and the commandos. At least 20 insurgents were killed and 11 others injured seriously. However, no Indian soldier was injured.
The meticulously planned assault was rehearsed by the highly trained commandos of 21 Para Regiment on Sunday in the jungles near Chandel, where the deadly ambush by a joint group of NSCN(K), KYKl and KlA on June 4 claimed the lives of 18 soldiers of the 6 Dogra Regiment.
The two Special Forces assault teams practiced night attack on models of the two training camps housing 20-25 militants in each camp. The models were made after receiving satellite pictures and intelligence provided by Indian and Myanmar intelligence agencies, officials said here on Wednesday.
The training was kept under wraps as the Army did not want to give any chance to the militants to get a whiff of the forthcoming assault and melt away into the jungles. Once the exercise was over, the Special Forces team reached the staging post in small groups to avoid detection.
Armed with Israeli-made Tavor close quarter battle rifles, Dragnov sniper guns (which can take out a target at more than 800 metres), night vision goggles, satellite phones and specially made light weight bulletproof jackets, the commandos were airlifted to designated zone in Dhruv advance light helicopters and MI-17S near the India-Myanmar International Border late on Monday night.
Alert to retain the element of surprise, the commandos had to land far away from the camps so that the militants could not hear the rotor and engine noise of helicopters in the dead of the night, officials said, while explaining the need for the ground operation.
The commandos then trekked through the dense jungles for nearly an hour before encircling the terror camps located about two to three kilometres from the International Border. The objective of the raiding party was to complete the operation before daybreak to avoid any retaliatory action by the remnants of militants who could have managed to regroup.
The final assault began at 3 am with the main team launching a frontal assault on the militants, while other commandos stationed at vantage positions some distance away from the camps to cut escape routes, they said.
As per the plan, the raids on the two camps had to be carried out simultaneously to prevent militants from warning each other and the commandos were successful in doing so, officials said. The two strikes lasted for not more than 30 minutes and the Special Forces teams then jogged back to the “extraction point” where the helicopters were waiting to take them back to their bases in Manipur.
Reports quoted Zaw Htay, director of the office of Myanmar President Thein Sein, confirming on Wednesday that Indian troops had entered his country. He said that there was “coordination and cooperation” between the Indian troops and Myanmar’s armed forces based in the area of the raids, but added that no Myanmar soldiers were directly involved.
“We will never allow or support insurgents, whether (they are) against Myanmar or against our neighboring countries,” Mr. Zaw Htay added.
India has eight battalions (1,000 soldiers in a battalion) of Special Forces trained in carrying out such operations of strategic nature. They are trained in high altitude parachute diving for behind-the-enemy-lines raids to cripple its war fighting capabilities.
In fact, the Indian Special Forces have vast experience in taking out targets in dense jungles of the North-east and mountainous terrain of Jammu & Kashmir. They also fought against lTTE cadres during Indian Peacekeeping mission (IPKF) in Sri lanka in mid 1980s. The Special Forces also gave a good account of themselves during the 1971 Bangladesh liberation war with Pakistan.