SRINAGAR: A third soldier of the 18 Rashtriya Rifles died Friday of injuries suffered in the terrorist ambush on a supplies-laden military truck along the LoC near Gulmarg in north Kashmir's Baramulla the previous evening, taking the death toll in the attack to five, including two porters.
Two of the slain soldiers were identified as Jeevan Singh and Kaisar Ahmed Shah, both Riflemen. Details about the third military casualty weren't immediately available except that the deceased was from Haryana. One wounded soldier is being treated in a military hospital.
As Army helicopters and drones hovered over Botapathri and ground forces scoured the Nagin area for the attackers, suspected to be part of a batch of recent infiltrators from Pakistan, it was almost business as usual in the nearby tourist hub of Gulmarg.
The administration said there was no plan to evacuate or temporarily halt tourists' entry to the popular destination, barely 12km from the ambush site. Gondola Cable Car Corporation attributed a brief suspension of its service to a technical snag, saying the gondola lift was now operational.
A senior official said hotels in Gulmarg were teeming with tourists, and there was no sense of panic, although additional checkpoints had been set up at various entry points as a precautionary measure.
In Nowshera village of Uri, residents milled at the house of 27-year-old Mushtaq Ahmad Choudhary, one of the two porters killed in the ambush and his family's lone breadwinner.
Mushtaq, whose father Mohammad Yaqoob is a cancer patient, last saw his parents, wife and four-year-old son before leaving home five months ago to work as a porter with the Rashtriya Rifles.
"We can't imagine life without him," Mushtaq's mother Khatija Begum said.
The village demanded that the family be treated on a par with the kin of the soldiers who died in the ambush. The other porter killed in the attack was Manzoor Ahmed Mir of Boniyar in Baramulla.
The Army's Chinar Corps issued a statement expressing condolences and solidarity with the bereaved families. "All ranks of the Chinar Corps salute the supreme sacrifices of the bravehearts who laid down their lives in the line of duty," it said in a post on X.
A defence spokesperson said the military team that was ambushed retaliated "swiftly and resolutely" despite losing two colleagues in the initial moments of the attack. The military response forced the terrorists to retreat into dense foliage across a nullah in fading light, leaving behind a weapon and a rucksack, he said.
Lieutenant governor Manoj Sinha said the "sacrifices" of those in the terrorists' firing line wouldn't go in vain. "We will respond strongly to the attackers," he said. "We will bolster security in J&K's sensitive border areas."
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